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Dennis was always interested in science. Not in a boring way, or anything, he just liked being informed on the world, on its funny rules and laws that science dictated. And psychology too, another thing that always fascinated him. He’s rather well-rounded, intellectually speaking. He prided himself on being able to read human behaviour, on understanding why people did what they did even when they themselves were too stupid to get it. There was always an explanation for every single thing that has ever happened, every single event out there in the world and within people themselves. It was all science.
So when he shows up at Paddy’s again, after spending so long in North Dakota and Mac is inexplicably ripped, there’s an explanation for it. The reason is probably something to do with Dennis being gone; Mac probably worked out every 5 minutes to forget about him being gone, or to look his best when Dennis did (inevitably) return. And he really did look his best, his body was ripped as shit, sure, but it also really carved out his face nicely, displaying his cheekbones and jawline in ways that Dennis envied. The guy looked good, all hard muscles and warm skin.
Dennis knows this, because he felt Mac one night, a couple days after he returned. Mac was standing at the bar, and he turned to grab a bottle of tequila on the back shelf just as Dennis was sliding past him. Dennis’ hand, prepared to steady himself on the vast expanse of Mac’s back, found itself pressed against Mac’s chest instead, right between the slope of his pecs.
The two men looked at each other, one of those rare quiet moments in the bar where Charlie, Dee and Frank were fucked off somewhere else, scheming in the basement, or the back office, didn’t matter where. The bar was empty save for the two of them, and Dennis felt his hand slowly sliding down Mac’s chest, experimentally, fingers curious about the state of his best friend’s body.
“Nice, bro,” he says, sounding perfectly normal and his voice does not break on the first word. The words tumbled out before he could stop them. His hand is still on Mac, closer to his belly button now. His face feels hot.
Mac’s face, however, has lit up. He seems completely unconcerned and unaffected by Dennis’ hand still on him, and he leaps into a breathless account of his current fitness routine, glowing at Dennis’ compliment. Compliments are not a common thing from Dennis, careful to not be too liberal with his use of them, so this is rare treat for Mac. Dennis only half listens, his own brain suddenly chugging to keep up with the conversation. His eyes flicker between Mac’s face (Mac’s mouth, if he’s being honest), and down at his hand. He’s so… firm. Heat bleeds from under the shirt, warming Dennis through the contact. He drops his hand back to his side after a moment, when he realizes he has no idea what Mac has just finished saying to him.
“Want a shot?” He asks instead, hoping that there wasn’t a question in his friend’s monologue. Mac just grins, grabs two shot glasses, and pours some of the tequila from the bottle he still has in his hand. Neither opt for salt or limes, throwing their heads back and swallowing down the liquor unflinchingly. Dennis can’t take his eyes off Mac’s throat as he takes his shot, the sharp line of his jaw, the fine layer of stubble, the movement of his adam’s apple as he swallows. The tequila swirls in Dennis’ stomach, and suddenly he feels queasy.
“C’mon, let’s go find Frank and Charlie.” Mac, still smiling, turns on his heels. As if he’s tethered to Mac by a short line of string, Dennis finds himself following without a second thought.
It’s science, is what he’s getting at. It’s human nature. You see a man before you who is at peak physical condition, and you’re automatically attracted to him. He’s strong; he would be able to protect you from predators and provide for you through hunting if necessary. It’s ingrained in your DNA, just like it’s ingrained to like chicks with big tits. And Dennis still likes chicks with big tits, so he really doesn’t need to be worried about the fact that his mind stutters to a halt sometimes when he sees Mac now— when he’s fresh from a shower, only wrapped in a towel from the waist down and showing off his wet, muscular torso. Or like when he would lug a keg from the basement and would barely break a sweat. Dennis was just sitting at the bar when he sees Mac do this the first time, spinning a little cocktail umbrella around the countertop. The rest of the gang seem unimpressed by this display, as if they’d seen Mac do it a thousand times already. He starts chewing on the umbrella, physically spinning on his stool as he follows Mac’s unworried movement across the bar. He sees Dee out of the corner of his eye, as Mac starts switching out the keg. She raises her eyebrows at him, pinched bird face staring between him and Mac, accusatory. He shrugs it off. Who gave a shit what Dee thinks she sees?
It’s science, and Mac is ripped, and Dennis is a human being with eyes that can appreciate the aesthetic beauty of his best friend’s body without it meaning something more.
The problems only start to arise a few weeks on. He’s been home for almost a month, a month that he couldn’t properly determine if he’s glad to be back in Philly or not. He’s glad to be back on the schemes, mostly, but he’s also been having a lot of trouble focusing on the tasks at hand. Mac’s just always there, is the problem, always there when Dennis wakes up, bustling around in the kitchen as he prepares his workout smoothie on the way to the gym, dripping half naked around the apartment after his showers, standing in direct sightlines whenever they’re at the bar. And people talk to him now, flirting with him brazenly. There’s a couple of people in a group who come in semi-regularly at around 2 in the morning, when they should be closing up but are too lazy to actually follow the rules. They’re all men, all clearly having come from a night clubbing at The Rainbow, and all they’re interested in is ordering light beers for their table and trying to ensnare Mac in conversation.
Which is— it’s fine. More than fine. Dennis is glad that Mac is finally getting laid, though he is unsure whether Mac is actually having sex with any of them. Would be nice if they paid any attention to anyone at the bar other than Mac, though. It wouldn’t matter even if Dennis tried to seduce them, wouldn’t matter even if he fluttered his eyelashes at the group (which he would never do), they were only interested in Mac. Which again, is totally fine. Dennis just wishes there were more desirable men and women that he’d be interested in coming in, that’s all.
One Saturday night, when they’re actually kind of busy for their standards, Dennis is bartending when the group from The Rainbow comes in. Mac is off somewhere, resolving some dispute in the corner that Dee is having with some drunk. Dennis serves the group, politely, and they settle at one of the tables closest to the bar. From his vantage point, he can see the group begin their ogling, and can even catch some of their snippets of conversation. They’re glancing over at Mac, but they seem to actually be trying for subtly.
“Look at his hands,” says the blonde one, wearing a tight crop top with a shiny leather jacket over top. The leather looks fake.
“God, I know,” says one of the two brunettes, resting his chin on his hand and staring dreamily. “Wouldn’t you love to get choked by those?”
Dennis coughs in surprise, spilling a bit of the drink he’s pouring for another customer. The customer doesn’t notice, chatting away to the ugly woman he’d come there with. He finishes up the transaction, then peers across the room at Mac.
Whatever was going on with the drunk seems to be just about finished, Mac leaning heavily over the table in what he probably thinks is an intimidating way. Dennis looks down at his friend’s hands, fingers stretched wide across the table. He doesn’t know what the attraction is. They just look like Mac’s hands. Sure, his hands are big, strong and calloused enough to be rough but not calloused enough to be un-appealing. Dennis has felt those hands countless times before, in one situation or another. He’s felt him touching him, and he can almost feel a ghost of his fingertips, drawing a line up his torso, tracing his jaw, closing in around his throat…
“Hey, boner. I need three rum and cokes.” Dee slams her tray down on the countertop. Her eyes are narrowed, but she looks smug, as if she knows exactly what she’s doing. “Stop staring at Mac.”
Dennis bristles. “I wasn’t staring at Mac.” He starts making the drinks, unable to look his sister in the eye.
“Uh huh.”
Dennis is quiet for the rest of the night. When they finally close down and are counting out all the money, Mac and Dennis are the only ones left. Dee had peeled out of there right away, as soon as she had her tips counted. Frank and Charlie left not too long after, arguing about something to do with sewers, or rats, or sewer rats or something. Mac wandered around; a bit bored as he waited for Dennis to finish doing the math. This was technically Frank’s job, but Dennis knew that if he didn’t actually count it now, Frank’d just toss it all in a bag and fake the numbers anyway.
“Uh, Dennis?” Mac interrupts the silence about halfway through, when Dennis is still counting up the nickels. Honestly, who went to a bar and paid with nickels? Dennis couldn’t stand it. “I think I’m gonna head out too.”
“What?” Dennis looks up from the thousands of nickels he’s still counting. “I’m almost done, 10 more minutes and I’ll drive us home.”
Mac looks shifty. “Er, no, it’s okay. I’m going to meet up with someone.” Dennis notices for the first time the phone unlocked in Mac’s hand. He can just barely make out a text conversation open on the screen, but Mac locks the phone with a quick click.
An ugly feeling rears up in Dennis’ chest, and he feels his body closing in on itself. “It’s 3 in the goddamn morning. Who are you meeting up with at this hour?” He knows, of course. Not any names, specifically, but the only person who agrees to meet up this late at night is someone you’re fucking. Or who is fucking you.
Mac blushes, confirming Dennis’ suspicions. “Uh, just a friend.” Mac’s a shitty liar. Especially when it comes to lying to Dennis. “Better get going!” He tacks this part on, as if it’ll distract Dennis from his shitty lying. Not that a distraction really matters, because Mac is fleeing out the back door within a matter of seconds, leaving Dennis completely alone in the bar.
He doesn’t care. Okay, maybe he cared a little bit, because getting ditched sucks. Psychology and common sense says that people like to get laid. Mac didn’t have to hide that he was going to get his needs met, and it didn’t mean that Mac was choosing someone else over him. “It doesn’t.” He says out loud, thankful that there was no one around to hear it. Science, reason, order. Mac went to someone who would do what Dennis wasn’t willing to do. That was perfectly understandable.
Dennis stands up, and tosses the half-counted money into a bag, and throws it in the safe. He locks up, drives home, and jerks off until he falls asleep.
*
It gets worse the more time that passes. It’s partly due to the medication, he thinks, the pills fucking with his libido, making him uninterested in pursuing his own sexual relationships with people. How is he supposed to get laid when he works almost every day, is involved in some type of scheme with his sister and fake dad every other? It’s not a very sexual environment. And it’s not like he’s young anymore. Maybe when he was in his 20’s he’d be able to live the kind of lifestyle that included having sex with beautiful people while working a full-time job, but he was in his 40’s now. Science says that his body is starting to deteriorate, which is something that if he thinks really long and really hard about will have him ready to cave in his own skull on some curb somewhere.
He can physically feel the difference in his body, can feel where it’s starting to strain with age, where it’s starting to give in to the pressures of time, even just a little bit. He started doing yoga while in North Dakota, both because there was absolutely nothing else to do, and because the stretching helped with the dull aching he’d get in his spine, as long as he didn’t push himself too much. It’s depressing, it really is, and made even more so by the phenomenal shape that Mac was in. You didn’t see Mac slowing down, you didn’t see Mac carefully arranging his limbs while sitting in order to best keep his joints and bones from resting in positions that would cause him agony later. No, Mac was showing no signs of aging, beyond the light peppering of grey in his hair and beard, and it just made him look dignified and sexy. He’d be one of those guys who, when it came time for it, was going to pull off grey really well.
Dennis could imagine Mac when he was in his 50’s or so, hair gone fully silver. He’ll still have the good type of mass, maybe a bit softened by time, but he’ll still look really good. Whenever Dennis thinks about Mac’s body—not that he does—he thinks about it in a mix of aesthetic appeal, and with a weird type of warmth and affection that he’s not used to feeling. There’s been times where Mac’s looked fairly unremarkable, and there’s been times where Dennis found him repulsive, but he thinks that there’s never been a time where there wasn’t something Dennis liked about him. When they were young, and Mac had been all hip bones and wiry muscle, Dennis had liked the way that their bodies almost mirrored each other, nudging elbows feeling like an extension of his own body, familiar even when they had just met. When Mac was “cultivating mass”, his eating habits had been absolutely disgusting, but Dennis had privately thought about how solid he was. He’d been so hot then, physically hot, temperature-wise, that even standing near him you could feel it radiating off of him, which was nice because it was when Dennis was eating the least and his own body was the coldest. And then there’d been all the times in between, when Mac wasn’t fat, wasn’t skinny, but was somewhere in the middle, glamour muscles toned while the rest of him wasn’t. A thick, reliable weight that suited him, where he went to the gym but wasn’t particularly worried about it. Dennis liked this weight; liked the view of Mac’s profile, face fleshed out and handsome.
Dennis liked Mac. He wouldn’t have stuck around, wouldn’t have remained his roommate for all these years if he didn’t. When he was in North Dakota, he missed the gang, sure, but it was the thought of Mac’s face, of his expressive eyes, of his wide smiles that eventually led him back to Philly. The absolute shock he’d felt and shoved down when he came back and Mac’s sweet face looked as if he’d been chiseled out of marble.
But he’d been over this. He’d been over that day, again, and again, and again. He’d talked to his psychiatrist, some asshole that he’d picked over on the complete other side of town from Paddy’s in order to reduce his chances of bumping into the gang. He wasn’t ashamed of this shit anymore, it was something that he needed to deal with, but he just knew that the rest of the gang would pull some dumb shit if the person prescribing his medication practiced right down the street from them. He hated his psychiatrist, hated everything about him, but neither of them took it too seriously. Dennis would have hated anyone that he routinely told secrets to.
He’s there, in therapy, a couple of days after Mac’s 3am date, rambling on to Dr. Whats-His-Name. He’s not talking about anything in particular, just recounting the events of the past few days. He had gotten into a particularly nasty argument with Dee the night previous, screaming at each other too loudly to be able to properly distinguish what each twin was actually saying. The rest of the gang had been present, but Frank, Charlie, and Mac were too used to the bitter arguments the twins would get into to actually intervene.
They were still sniping at each other as they closed the bar down, spitting insults across the emptied room when Mac put a hand on Dennis’ shoulder, and murmured quietly in his ear. “C’mon. The bird’s not worth it. Let’s go home.” Dennis had melted, and they’d slipped out into the alleyway before any of the others could complain about them not staying to help clean up. The night air had been cool on Dennis’ skin, hot from his fury, and he’d allowed Mac to guide them both back to the Range Rover. Mac’s hand had been on the small of his back as he led him down the alley to the street, and Dennis could feel any remaining anger at his sister completely evaporate up into the dark April clouds.
They didn’t go home straight away, Mac convincing Dennis to drive to the Wawa and pick up a couple of snacks for their movie night the next evening. Dennis had felt light, like he was 17 again and he was sneaking out of his parent’s house to hang out with Mac and Charlie and get drunk in a park. Mac must have felt it too, because he was glued to his side, smiling and grinning at everything that Dennis said, the two of them giggling together while walking down the aisles, grabbing at chips, and beef jerky, and a bag of sour gummy bears that Dennis would allow himself to eat over the course of the next week or so. Mac told him that it’d just make his gums hurt, but Dennis didn’t care. The weight of his anger at Dee, when contrasted with how carefree he felt now, was an intoxicating combination. He really did feel better than he had in years. After they pay, Mac carries all their bags, and Dennis drags him back out to the Range Rover with a firm grip on his wrist. He looks back, the two of them only dimly illuminated by the weak light of the moon peeking through the clouds, and the artificial fluorescence of the parking lot streetlights. Mac was looking back at him, eyes dark. He looked like an angel. If Dennis believed in god, he’d say that Mac had been sculpted like this, bulging muscles and rosy cheeks, with Dennis in mind.
They got in the car and drove home, still chatting and laughing. Dennis ignores how much he wanted to kiss him under the streetlights.
The psychiatrist sits across the room from him, same blank and non-confrontational expression smoothing out his face as Dennis recounts his fight with Dee and his trip with Mac. Dennis knows psychology, so he’s always been able to see past this blank facade and determine what the guy’s actually thinking. He wants to talk about Mac. He always wants to talk about Mac, can’t resist poking and prodding into the parts of Dennis that he’s firmly kept zipped, buckled, and bolted up and then pushed into a deep part of him. There was just no use in dwelling on it, Dennis would say. Dennis was, for the most part, happy with the life he was living now. He had hated it before he moved away, and he’s sure he’d grow to hate it again one day, but for now he was satisfied with the gang. He’d tried the whole fatherhood thing, and it had been suffocating. He much preferred it in Philly. And like he said, he knew psychology, he knew human nature, and he wasn’t an idiot. He can recognize the signs of a crush when he sees them. There’s just no point in delving any deeper when things were so good.
When Dennis had first started coming to this psychiatrist a couple years previously, before they found out that Dennis doesn’t respond very well to homework, the psychiatrist had assigned him a journal. In the journal he was meant to log the times where he could recognize fluctuations in his emotions. It hadn’t worked as intended, because Dennis’ emotions back then had been so rapid-fire that it was impossible to keep up, and because when he was on the verge of spiralling into a rage-induced meltdown, it wasn’t like he was going to take the time to jot it down first.
The result of keeping this journal over the course of a few weeks was the reason why the psychiatrist wouldn’t shut up about Mac. The only time that Dennis actually wrote in the journal was when Mac was around, because Mac was always there, always so damn earnest and encouraging that Dennis was constantly being guilted into writing in the thing. Because of this, there were pages upon pages where the only thing that Dennis had actually written was about Mac. It would be things like, “ August 4, 7:55pm - Monthly dinner with Mac. Happy with meal. ” or, “ August 12, 9:27am - Woke up to Mac bringing homemade smoothie bowls and coffee to bed. Decent.”
“He’s a good influence on you,” the psychiatrist would say, Dennis staring at the loose thread at the end of the man’s sleeve. Charges Dennis a fortune per session and couldn’t even take care of a goddamn cashmere sweater. “And I think we should talk about how you feel about your relationship with Mac, about—”
“Nah,” Dennis would wave him off, dismissive, but not making a big deal out of it, or anything. The way Dennis saw it, he could worry about his feelings for Mac on his deathbed, and not a second sooner.
He leaves therapy that day, having successfully dodged being asked about Mac once again, keeping the focus primarily on his relationship with Dee. That was a minefield in and of itself, so he’d been able to take up their entire hour just talking about her. It’s rather impressive, he thinks, as he can’t even fully recall what he and Dee had been arguing about. It’s almost 6 by the time he’s in his car, as he stops off at Starbucks on his way to Paddy’s. He shouldn’t be drinking coffee at this hour, would keep him jittery late into the night, but he’s craving the taste. He orders his own coffee on ice, and then the sugar-filled monstrosity that Mac gets. While in line, he considers calling the bar and asking if anyone else wanted anything, but he knows that Charlie doesn’t like anything at the coffee shop except the portions of whipped cream that the baristas will sometimes give you if you say you have a dog, and he doesn’t give a shit if Frank or Dee want anything. He gets his drinks without incident, then heads down to Paddy’s.
He’s greeted there by a jumble of chaos. The bar is completely packed, Dennis freezing in the doorway with confusion. He recognizes a few of the people there, can see Mac’s groupies interspersed within the crowd, a couple of people he’s seen pictures of on Mac’s phone when he’s showed Dennis group selfies he’s taken at The Rainbow. As he stands in the doorway, he sees Charlie rush by, on his way towards the bathroom. Dennis reaches out, shifting his drink tray to the other hand. “Charlie? What the hell is going on?”
Charlie looks harried, glancing back and forth between Dennis, the bathroom, and the Starbucks in Dennis’ hand. “Aw, man, you didn’t get me anything?” He says, shrill voice barely audible over the noise of the crowd in their bar.
“They were out of whipped cream!” Dennis snaps, catching himself as he feels his anger beginning to rise. He takes a quick breath, steadying himself. “Charlie. What is everyone doing here?”
“Mac didn’t mention? It’s Rex’s birthday, and a bunch of people from that gay bar that Mac’s always going to wanted to throw him a party.”
“A party? It’s practically the middle of the goddamn day.”
Charlie shrugs, and his attention is fixed solely on the door to the bathroom. “I dunno, it was something about catering, dude, and we’re making a shitload of money on drinks, so whatever, right?” With that, Charlie walks off, weaving in and out of crowds of partygoers, apparently here for Rex. Goddamn Rex, and his goddamn birthday. Dennis could feel a vein in his forehead twitching. But he’s still just standing in the doorway like an idiot, so he pushes himself to action, and shoves his way into the throngs of people. He heads towards the bar, assuming that he’ll find a pissed off Dee, and he’s right. “Where the fuck have you been?” She hisses as he crosses behind the bar, kicking at a pile of shattered glass at her feet so it’s out of range of her giant bird feet.
“Therapy.” Dennis spits back, with enough venom in his truthful words that she doesn’t argue back with him. He takes a sip of his coffee, considers questioning Dee on when they agreed to host a party for Rex, before turning to the crowd of customers who have noticed Dennis and are now eagerly waiting on him. He can tell this is definitely a crowd from The Rainbow. He smooths at his button up, rolling up his sleeves, and plasters on his fakest smile. “What can I get for you boys?”
A couple hours pass before he even sees Mac. It’s when they’re bringing out the cake, a massive monstrosity of carbs topped with sugar that he finally catches sight of him. He’s dressed in a tight black v-neck that miraculously hasn’t had the sleeves chopped off. He looks ridiculous, half his body coated in glitter, and stuffed in a shirt at least one size too small for him. It’s the first time he’s actually seen Rex that day as well, looking exactly like he always does, which is to say, buff and dumb. It makes Dennis’ blood boil, as he gets his first informal break of the night, because everyone in the room is more focussed on singing happy birthday to the fucking buffoon before them. Dennis didn’t even know that Rex swung that way. Nothing wrong with it, and it is an interesting development if he actually put some thought into it. He wonders, vaguely, as he watches Rex blow out the candles on the cake Mac is holding before him, if Rex and Mac had ever hooked up. The two of them were a sight together, after all. Beefcake on beefcake. Dennis always thought that Mac would want someone less beefy, though he supposes he has no discernable reason for thinking so.
Cake is dispersed, and people start ordering drinks again, so Dennis gets back to work. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rex shove a piece of cake in Mac’s face. Mac laughs, head thrown back and shoulders heaving. Dennis ignores it.
Mac eventually makes his way over to the bar, and he has the presence of mind to look a bit bashful about everything. Dennis has been fun and charming all evening in order to get tips, but his anger has been slowly building the entire time, a sludge creeping through his veins until the only thing that is keeping him together is the appreciative looks the customers are giving him. But even the strength of his ego starts crumbling away as Mac approaches, eyes on the ground in the way that Dennis fucking hates, when he’s too afraid to look him in the eyes. He shouldn’t do this — a small, annoying voice in his head reminds him. He’s only just come back from North Dakota, almost two months. The gang had been gracious enough to accept him back without any complaints. Mac had been gracious enough to give him his old room back, no questions asked. Dennis turns away from the customers, throwing the small towel that he keeps in his pocket while bartending on the back of the bar. It lands right beside the drink he’d purchased for Mac hours earlier, now nothing but a horrible homogeneous brown mixture.
“Hi Dennis.” Mac doesn’t come behind the bar, standing at the end. A few of the customers were staring at the two of them curiously. Something inside of Dennis laughs. They must be able to smell the blood in the water.
“Hi Mac.” Dennis’ voice is ice, not bothering to stay quiet. He doesn’t care if anyone hears. “Here I am, thinking that tonight was movie night. Imagine my surprise when I show up to this.”
Mac’s face flashes between expressions— from confusion, to realization, to a dawning horror. He’s still not looking directly at Dennis, he’s looking at the people around him, at Dee, still bartending behind him, at the counter where the Starbucks still sits, accusatory. One more expression, this time, something a bit more sad, wistful, and Dennis can tell that he’s realized that the drink was for him. Quietly, Mac mumbles something that Dennis can’t quite hear. He rolls his eyes. “Speak up. And how many times do I have to tell you to look at me when you’re talking to me?”
Mac clears his throat. Eyes still cast down, mournful, he starts speaking again, this time a bit louder. “We can still have movie night after this.”
Dennis is silent, biding his time like a predator stalks their prey. Mac starts to fidget, probably hyper-aware of the group of people openly staring. Mac probably knows all these people, Dennis realizes. He’s embarrassing him in front of all of his friends. Dennis isn’t sure if he’s happy about that or not.
A moment passes. It can’t be more than one full minute, Mac is never able to let too much time pass without saying something. He seems to take a deep breath, then casts his eyes up, finally making eye contact. “I’m sorry, bro. I totally forgot to tell you about all of this. It was super last minute, I didn’t even know for sure until earlier today, and you were at—”.
“Mac.” Dennis snaps, a warning. He’s totally not ashamed, but if Mac had just announced that he was at therapy in front of this entire group of people, he would have clawed his eyes out. He can feel it, can feel his hands shaking, can feel the blood and the bile and all of the ugliness that he’s so used to feeling start to rush up to the surface. Like a volcano ready to erupt, just waiting for some external trigger, or for something deep down in the pit of his stomach to build up enough pressure to burst on its own.
Two meltdowns within two days, though. He thinks about his psychiatrist, probably living in a shitty townhouse that is nonetheless nicer than his apartment, and he tries to think about the kind of bullshit that he’d be saying if he were in the room with them. He chases down the traces of memories, of sessions that he’d sat through with his chest heaving and splitting, trying to remember exactly what the guy had actually said. He must be doing a shitty job, because Dennis just can’t recall any of the actual helpful advice, can’t remember any of the tips, any of the tricks. The only thing he can think of, in that exact moment, is Mac, kneeling on the tile in their kitchen as Dennis has a breakdown on the floor, rubbing soothing circles on his back. Just breathe, the Mac in his memory whispers in his head. In and out. In and out. In and out.
Dennis is very resentful of it, but as he breathes in and out deeply through his nose, he can feel the molten hot magma inside of him hesitantly start to settle. It’s something that he’s sure that he wouldn’t have been able to do a couple of years ago. It’s something that he’s not sure he’d still be able to do if he weren’t medicated. Mac, and the other assorted customers, are still watching him, still waiting to see exactly what Dennis was going to do. Dennis is suddenly exhausted by the situation, his will to fight completely drained out of him despite the anger still simmering beneath the surface. Instead, Dennis just turns to his left, grabs the Starbucks cups, including his own empty iced coffee, and shoves them into Mac’s fumbling hands. “Here.” His voice still sounds cold and distant, but it’s significantly less so than before. “Throw these out.” He turns away, goes back to bartending. He can feel Mac hovering behind him, can practically hear the wheels turning in his head, but after a minute or two, he leaves.
They begin the process of closing down not too long after that. It’s only 12:30, but Dennis and Dee have been on their feet for hours serving drinks, only getting the occasional break when Charlie or Mac switches in for them. Charlie and Mac are both fucking terrible at bartending, though, so they try and keep it to a minimum. And they can close whenever they want to, it’s their bar. The bar starts clearing, party members grumbling a bit, but rerouting back over to The Rainbow. Dennis wonders if the owners of the gay bar were worried with so many of their regular clientele MIA.
Dennis makes himself a stiff drink. Dee, the second that people started leaving had abandoned him, leaving him with the task of clearing up. He didn’t really mind. Charlie would be around soon to do the proper cleaning, so he could handle wiping the top of the bar with a rag as long as he could drink during.
He’s finished his first drink and started on his second when he realizes he’s not alone at the bar. “Holy shit, sorry dude. Didn’t see you there.” He laughs a little bit, having genuinely jumped when he looked up to see Rex on the other side of the bar. He takes a sip, and feels the alcohol slowly relaxing his muscles. He frowns. “Wait, what are you doing here? Don’t you have another party to go to?”
Rex shrugs, that pleasant, blank expression perpetually on his face. Somehow, when he’s right up in Dennis’ face, he doesn’t seem as irritating as he was before. “I think I’m all partied out. I wanted to thank you guys. Today was unreal.”
Dennis waves a hand dismissively, as if he had had a key role in the planning of the party. “Don’t worry about it, dude.” He hesitates, before the truth spills from his mouth. “It was mostly Mac, I think. Do you know where he is?”
“Oh,” Rex furrows his brows, as if thinking very hard about something. “I think I saw him head off to The Rainbow with the rest of them.” Rex pauses then, too, mirroring Dennis. “That’s partly why I stayed. Saw him leave and thought you might want some… company.”
Dennis blinks, not quite following. He finishes his second drink. Begins a third, and he makes one for Rex as well, who smiles at him appreciatively. It’s not an uncomfortable silence; the clattering of bottles interrupting the subtle bloom of tension developing in the room. When Rex reaches out to take the drink, their hands touch on the side of the glass. “Huh.” Dennis says, tilting his head to the side, appraising the man before him. “Do you mean…?”
Rex grins. It’s the same dumb smile, but there’s a hint of something dirty behind it. “Only if you want me to mean it.”
And oh. Oh. Dennis leans forward, elbows braced on the bar as he considers the proposition. Thinking about it logically, Dennis knows it’s probably not a great idea. Rex is dumb as hell, for one, though he’d never turned down someone hot just because they were dumb before. Another thing is that he’s pretty sure that he’s hooked up with Mac before, which is something he doesn’t really want to think about. And what did he mean, I saw Mac leave, and thought you might want some company ? Is he implying that he thinks that Dennis and Mac are hooking up as well? Is Rex even smart enough for his words to have a double meaning?
It’s not even really about the guy thing. Dennis has had sex with men before, has definitely enjoyed it in the past. He doesn’t advertise it, and he does have a tendency towards women, but it’s mainly because sex with women is just a bit easier logistically. But he does find men attractive. He definitely finds Rex attractive. How could he not? He’s built like a stallion, and Dennis finds himself wondering if he’s hung like one too.
The bar is empty, save for the two of them. He knows that Charlie and Frank are around there somewhere, probably huffing glue in the back office or some other white trash activity. Dee’s probably somewhere too, unless she joined the rest of them at The Rainbow. Dennis risks it, reaches across the bar, hand drifting to the bottom of Rex’s white t-shirt. He lifts it up, just a bit, and takes a look at the abs underneath. Dennis bites his lip, and Rex’s dirty smile grows wider. Okay, maybe Rex has hooked up with Mac before. So what? Why should that prevent Dennis from having a quick, meaningless fuck with him too? He’s built so strong, and he holds himself with the kind of careless confidence that comes with being hot your entire life. Dennis wants to feel, wants to touch, wonders what that kind of body feels like when it’s pressed against him, with Dennis’ legs wrapped around his waist, or torso draped across Dennis’ back. Now that the offer has been presented to him, he finds that it’s something that he’s completely unable to resist. His mouth is practically watering.
“Well,” Dennis goes for a casual tone, but makes sure that his eyes don’t lose that lustful, upturned gaze that make people go wild in the bedroom. “I mean, it is your birthday.”
Rex nods vigorously, and he’s leaning across the bar towards him too. “Yeah. It’s my birthday. Let’s get out of here.”
Rex orders an Uber, and they have another drink while they wait for it. No one in the gang comes out to witness anything, but Dennis still peeks his head in the backroom before departing. Surely enough, Charlie and Frank are slumped in their chairs, passed out cold with an opaque white bag sticking out of a bucket between their two bodies. He can hear their snuffling and snoring, though, so Dennis isn’t worried. When the car arrives, he grabs a bottle of vodka, quickly locks the doors, and leaves the bar a complete disaster. Rex is waiting for him outside the car, holding the door open for him. As Dennis jumps in, he feels Rex’s hand brush down his back, exploring. Dennis forces down a blush.
They go back to Rex’s, which is on the other side of town. Dennis doesn’t want to risk running into Mac at some point, and Rex doesn’t have a roommate, so it just makes logical sense to go back to his. Dennis keeps his hands to himself in the car, too aware of their driver to do anything else, but the tension in the backseat is ridiculous. Rex chats to the driver, the two of them talking about the upcoming weather, or something like that, and Dennis rests his forehead on the cool glass of the window, drowning them out. He can see outside, into the dark streets, but he can also see himself looking back at him. He assesses himself. He looks good, he thinks. It’s hard to tell in the window reflection, but he thinks that the concealer under his eyes has been darkened a bit by the mascara. It’s not particularly noticeable, and he’s more worried about other parts of his body, if he’s being honest. The physical act of sex with men always had the potential to get a bit… messy. Especially since this is so unexpected. He’ll sneak off to Rex’s bathroom when he gets there, and he’ll see if there’s anything he can do to quickly freshen himself up. He clutches the bottle of vodka in his lap, sneaks a sip of it. When he looks up, Rex is staring at him, and he looks as if he wants to eat Dennis alive. Dennis doesn’t think he’d mind.
*
Dennis wakes up early the next morning, his body jolting him awake. It’s probably not even 7 yet, he estimates from the light that shines in through Rex’s curtains. Rex’s apartment is surprisingly nice, and Dennis wonders vaguely about what Rex actually does for a living, or if it’s all from modeling and being involved in pyramid schemes. Rex lays beside him, naked and sound asleep. He snores just a little bit, not enough to be a distraction, but loudly enough to notice. Dennis allows himself a moment to ogle, eyes scanning from the tips of his toes all the way up his tan body. His legs are twisted in the sheets, and the room absolutely reeks of sex, and it’s giving Dennis a headache. Dennis takes his moment, and then he slowly collects his things, orders an Uber, and leaves.
He was right about the time. It’s 6:49 when he gets in the Uber, definitely feeling like he’s had better mornings. It’s the hangover, he thinks to himself. Because the sex had been good. No, the sex had been fantastic. They’d both torn into each other, Rex surprisingly dominant in bed, which allowed for a fun dynamic, the two men fighting each other. Rex had the size advantage, though, and Dennis really hadn’t minded in the end sitting back and letting the other man do all the work. He was sore, too, that uncomfortable ache that reminded him with every movement that he’d taken dick last night. A big dick, too.
The sex had been fantastic, yes. They both knew what to do, and they were both good at doing it. Rex was clearly experienced, and Dennis prided himself in his sexual prowess. The only thing that had soured it a bit, was a couple of times during the sex, when they were just kissing, or they had their hands on the other’s dick, was that Dennis’ mind had started to wander. Rex was so, so hot, and he wasn’t identical to Mac, or anything, but Dennis would be kissing down Rex’s chest, and he’d look up and he’d imagine it was Mac’s brown eyes looking down at him. Or when Rex had slid inside of him for the first time, Dennis had shut his eyes so tightly he saw stars, and when he opened them again, he could have sworn it was Mac in between his legs, biting his lip as he concentrated on not coming as soon as he was fully sheathed inside of him. It was hard to differentiate between the giant wall of muscle that he was having sex with, with the giant wall of muscle that he spends almost all his time with.
His Uber drops him off, probably giving him a poor rating for how Dennis ignored him the couple of times that he’d tried to make conversation, but Dennis doesn’t care. He makes his way back up to his apartment, excited to get into his own bed and sleep off his headache.
When he opens the door, however, Mac’s there waiting for him. Or, was waiting for him, it seemed. Mac was fast asleep on the couch, arm thrown across his forehead as he snores loudly. His spine was curved awkwardly over the back of the couch, and Dennis winces looking at it. He shut the door behind him, quietly, surprised that the jingling of keys in the lock hadn’t woken him up to begin with. He tiptoes over to the couch, and he finds himself just looking, ogling Mac like he had just done so to Rex not even a half hour earlier. Goddamn, do they ever look alike now, Dennis thought to himself. Though, he privately thinks that Mac is more handsome than Rex is. Especially in the face. He definitely prefers Mac over Rex.
As if sensing his presence, Mac blinks himself awake. Dennis realizes, belatedly, that it’s probably a bit weird to wake up and find your roommate just staring at you, but it’s too late to pretend to be doing anything else by the time awareness floods into Mac’s face.
“Hi.” He just says.
“Hi.” Mac’s voice is rough with sleep, huskier than usual. He leans forward, stretching out his back from his awkward positioning. Dennis hears a few bones pop and crack, and he wants to reach out and rub the hurt from his spine. “Where were you?”
“Getting laid,” Dennis replies, and it’s not a lie, just veiling the truth a bit. He makes a sympathetic face. “Did you sleep on the couch?”
Mac nods, still looking half asleep. “Yeah. Was worried. You didn’t check in.”
“Neither did you.” His words sound accusatory, but his tone is not. He’s not trying to get into an argument right now, and both he and Mac understand it. Dennis stands there for a minute, shifting his weight from foot to foot, despite the aching in his backside as he does so. “Well. Uh. I’m gonna get some sleep.”
Mac nods again, but doesn’t say anything more, so Dennis turns and starts to make his way towards his room. Just as he’s about to shut the door behind him, he hears Mac swing to his feet with a soft, “wait.”
Dennis rotates back around again. “Yeah, Mac?” He doesn’t know why this feels so weird, doesn’t know why his voice sounds so gentle. Well, that’s not true. He knows why. But he’s going to continue ignoring it.
Mac opens and closes his mouth a few times, as if he’s weighing over his words carefully. Dennis just waits, knowing that Mac will get whatever he needs to say out eventually. And he does. “I just wanted to say,” he begins, taking a few steps closer so there’s not such an ominous gap between the two of them. “That I’m proud of you for last night. I know it probably wasn’t easy, but you handled it really well, and I’m. Yeah. That’s it.” His cheeks are red, but he faces him directly, as if he were uncomfortable but determined to appear steady.
Dennis, however, flounders. He blinks, rapidly. What? He handled it really well? Handled what, the sex? A dick? Is he talking about Rex? Did Rex call him and tell him? Did Rex text him updates? “What did you just say?”
Mac looks embarrassed now in earnest. “Last night, bro. I know you were like, super mad, but you didn’t even scratch me, or even yell at me. You calmed right down. I know you don’t like to talk about stuff like this, but I think you’re doing really well and I’m really, really happy for you.”
Oh, okay. That’s alright then. Mac is right, in that it is absolutely not something that he wants to talk about, but it’s better than what he thought he was thinking. “Oh, uh. Thanks, I guess. Uh. Good night, Mac.”
“Oh, yeah. Sleep well, Den.”
Dennis shuts the door, and gently wacks his head against it.
*
It’s not the end of the world, and life goes on. When he wakes up later, Dennis takes a shower, and he washes the smell of Rex off of his body. He’s relieved when he no longer smells like sex, tanning oil, and Axe body spray, and the evidence is gone. He thought gay men (if that’s even what Rex was) were supposed to have better taste than that, but there Dennis was, scrubbing the godawful scent of body spray marketed towards pubescent boys off of his nether regions. If Mac notices anything off, or that Dennis walks around with a bit of a limp, he doesn’t say anything. He does notice that Mac walks to the nearest Starbucks and grabs them both new drinks. When he sees his iced coffee sitting on the living room table, it’s like the slate is wiped clean. They move on.
A couple days later, Rex stops by Paddy’s. The whole gang is there, Mac and Dee talking about the possibility of a zombie uprising destroying the planet. Dee thinks it’s not only possible, but probable. Mac thinks that zombies are too played out, and if there’s going to be an invasion of any sci-fi creatures, it’ll be something people don’t talk about all the time, like vampires.
“Are you kidding me?” Charlie snorts. “Vampires are more played out than zombies ever could be. Zombies are classic.”
“Vampires are classic!”
Dennis snickers. “Well, you know, Mac really was a big Twilight fan a couple years ago.”
“I was not! You take that back right now!”
Rex had snuck his way up to the bar, where they’re all gathered around drinking. None of them notice the beefcake until he’s tapping Mac, the closest one to the door, on the shoulder. “Hey guys, what’re you talking about?”
“Holy shit, Rex, when did you get here?” Dee demands.
Dennis’ stomach drops as soon as he realizes what is going on, but the rest of the gang seem unconcerned. Mac beams brightly at Rex, ignoring Dee. “Hey man, what are you doing here? You wanna hit the gym? Get our pump on?” Dee and Charlie groan.
“I came by to talk to Dennis, actually. But yeah sure, maybe after. Always ready to get my pump on!”
“You want to talk to Dennis?” Mac frowns, staring bewildered between the two men. The rest of the gang look taken aback as well.
Dennis feels like his body is frozen. “What would you need to talk to me about?” His voice is quiet, his tone, warning.
Rex, however, is a fucking idiot, which Dennis forgets to account for. “Oh, I think you left something at my place the other night.” He grins, unaware of the sudden change in atmosphere in the room. Mac and Charlie both look as if they’re struggling to keep up. Frank doesn’t appear to be listening at all, but Dennis can see a slow, shit-eating grin spreading across his twin’s face. Dennis’ face is burning red, and he doesn’t have the composure to do anything except stalk out of the room, towards the back office. He hears Rex trailing after him, probably still smiling, because he’s a massively dumb idiot. As soon as he’s followed him into the office, Dennis slams the door shut. He can see Dee shifting closer, and he knows that bitch is going to be listening with her ear pressed against the door.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Dennis hisses, rounding on Rex. He’s pissed, but he still has the presence of mind to know that if things turned ugly—which he doesn’t think they will, doesn’t think Rex actually has it in him—Rex could absolutely rock his shit.
Rex just smiles. Dumbass. “I told you, I think you forgot this at my place when you left the other day.” Rex reaches into his pocket and pulls out a nice gold watch.
Dennis looks down at the watch in Rex’s outstretched hand, desperately trying to push down the irritation that is bursting at his seams. He closes his eyes. It’s not even his fucking watch. He needs to stay collected if he’s going to get through this relatively unscathed. Socially, he means. He considers lying for a minute, just so he can keep the watch, but he decides that making this next point is more important. Makes eye contact. “That’s not my watch.”
“Oh?” The smile finally drops from Rex’s handsome face, and he looks down at the golden watch. “Must have been some other guy.”
“Jesus Christ, dude. How many guys exactly are you having sex with that you’re mixing up their forgotten accessories?” It’s mean, he knows it’s mean, because he’s trying to be. He collects himself, gathering up all the nastiness that he knows he can muster. “You do know what that word means, right? Or is it too big for you?”
The look on Rex’s face resembles someone who just watched someone kick a puppy. “I know what the word accessory means, Dennis. I’m not stupid.”
Dennis laughs, cruelly. “Oh, but that’s where I think you might be wrong there, buddy. I think you’re very stupid. Only a very stupid man would come here to see me today, with the kind of shitty excuse you’ve brought before me. Was my sneaking away without saying goodbye not a clear enough message, Rex? Or did you think a thinly veiled reference to us sleeping together in front of my friends out there was enough that I’d hop back in bed with you?”
Rex shoves the watch back in his pocket, looking about as angry as Dennis was going for. “You’re an asshole, Dennis.” He spits, rounding on his heels and wrenching the door open. He storms across the bar, sending the members of the gang flinging like bowling pins from where they’d been huddled around each other in front of the office door. Dennis meanders his way out, unconcerned by the insult. It’s what he was going for, after all. He was reacting exactly how he was hoping he would.
The man stops just as he reaches the door to the street, fingers on the door handle. It actually looks like he’s having complex thoughts. “You know Dennis,” he turns his head, but only slightly, still mainly facing the door. “You weren’t a good enough lay to act like such a bitch.” With that, he’s gone.
The bar is silent with his departure. Dennis stands, gaping, in the doorway. He considers whether or not he underestimated Rex’s intelligence.
“Oh, shit.” Comes Dee’s voice after a few seconds of shocked silence. Dennis looks away from the doorway Rex just disappeared behind. “You had sex with Rex?”
Dennis scoffs, less a denial and more a scathing indictment on what the man had said on his departure. It’s not like he can play it off now after all, Rex was pretty clear. His mind bounces to the next most important issue. “Not a good enough lay. Please.”
“Whoa, what the hell just happened right now?” Charlie’s voice is several octaves higher than usual, which is an indicator that he’s really feeling some emotion. Dennis ignores him.
Frank finally appears to be paying attention, still stuffing pieces of beef jerky into his mouth in the meantime. “I’m not saying I have anything against it,” he pats Mac on the shoulder, “but the ratio of gays to straights in this group is closing in.”
“Not gay,” Dennis mutters, though it doesn’t seem to really matter. He’s finally looked away from the door to see all their eyes locked on him, various expressions of interest, delight, calculation and… distress? His stomach flips as he realizes that Mac looks as though he’s been punched in the gut.
Dee walks up to him, throwing an arm around his shoulder that he immediately shrugs off. She does it again, grip tighter this time and he relents, annoyed. “Well, doesn’t matter what.” She waves her other hand in a dismissive gesture. “What matters here, is that our good buddy Rex out there said that you weren’t good at sex. Bet that doesn’t make you feel very good, huh Dennis?”
“Shut up, bird.” Dennis and Mac say in unison. Dennis looks up from his sister, making eye contact with the other man. Something inside of him flutters when he sees Mac staring back at him.
“Of course, Mac defends him, he probably tests out his moves on him all the time!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Dee, I don’t know about that.” Charlie interrupts, throwing his hands up. He’s shifted his voice again, this time sounding like he does whenever he pretends to be a bird lawyer. “Just because Dennis and Mac are both gay—”
“Not gay.”
“Does not mean that they’re sleeping together.”
“Yeah, Deandra. That’s very problematic of you.”
Dee squawks, finally dropping her grip from around Dennis’ shoulder. “What the hell are you two talking about? When have either one of you ever in your lives cared about not being problematic?”
“It’s 2018, Deandra, we’re woke now!”
Dennis tunes them out after that, the three of them spiralling into their own conversation about social justice that he’s just not feeling like being a part of right now. Maybe later, when he’s regained a bit of his sanity, he can go in on the very limited grasp that Frank and Charlie have on being woke, but right now, his head is in a flurry. He slides away from Dee, behind the bar and grabs himself a beer. Mac sits down in front of him, and Dennis gives him one as well. They both look like they need one.
Dennis sighs deeply before taking a drink. See, the thing is, is that he knows this is going to lead to a discussion. He’d never really openly talked about his attraction to men, never talked about having sex with anyone who wasn’t a woman. And he didn’t owe a goddamn thing to people like Dee, or Frank, but he did feel a tug of guilt over keeping Charlie and Mac in the dark about the whole bisexual thing. Mostly Mac, because he knew that Charlie wouldn’t really care either way, while Mac absolutely would. It was going to complicate things, it was going to throw off their rhythm, and they’d end up hating each other because Dennis was too closed off emotionally, and Mac would leave and never speak to him again. He takes his sip. He’s also still pissed about the bad lay thing.
“So.” Mac says, voice lower than it probably needs to be with the other three screeching at each other on the other end of the bar. “What did you forget at Rex’s?”
Dennis coughs out a laugh, despite himself. He glances up at Mac, who has schooled his previously wounded expression into something lighter. Probably thought it was his duty, or whatever, to be the experienced Gay who was calm and supportive when his friends were ripped from their closet. Well, not a closet. If it were a closet, it was a glass one. Dennis wasn’t ashamed, or anything. “He thought I forgot a watch. Wasn’t even mine.”
Mac laughs too, and it sounds so warm it heats Dennis up from the inside out. “Wow. How many dudes is he having sex with that he mixes up the watches?”
“That’s what I said!” The two of them laugh again, together this time, and it eases the tension that was building up in Dennis’ body without even realizing. They let the laughter last, slowly petering out as they listen to the gang continue to argue. It’s a relief, he thinks, that Mac isn’t pushing for answers to questions Dennis doesn’t want to think about.
Dennis and Mac both take another sip of their drinks, before Mac clears his throat. “And don’t worry about he said, dude. I know he’s just saying that.” His voice is even lower than before, and he’s leaned in, with his fist slightly covering his mouth as he rests his chin on it.
“About what?” Dennis finds himself leaning in closer too, matching the other man’s tone of voice. He’s fairly certain he knows what Mac’s talking about, but he knows that if he prods a bit further, his friend will provide him with a much-needed ego boost.
“About, you know.” Mac is practically whispering now, his lips curving up at the corners. “Being bad in bed? That can’t be true. I’ve heard you.” Maybe he’s not just being a supportive friend.
“You’ve seen me, too.” Dennis nods. This conversation is going somewhere, he can feel his chest tighten, and he tries his best to ignore how it’s going straight to his dick. “On my sex tapes.”
Mac nods, almost looking solemn. “Sucks that they burnt down in the apartment. Some of them were good viewing.”
Dennis pauses, surveying Mac with an uncertain smile on his own face now. What were they doing? He clears his throat, and pulls away from the bar, continuing the pattern of hot and cold they’ve had going on for years. Sometimes when they get talking like this, Mac tries to kiss him. He doesn’t think he would right now, not with the rest of the gang watching, but it’s something for Dennis to consider. He thinks that next time Mac tries to kiss him, he might let him. This thing with Rex had turned into a bit of a disaster, but it led Dennis to the knowledge that he really, really, really likes having sex with big, strong beefcakes. Men who could hold him down while they’re fucking, men whose shoulders were firm and solid and made for fantastic pillows.
What would Mac be like in bed, he briefly allows himself to wonder. It’s really not fair; Mac has seen him have sex countless times in his sex tapes, but he’s never seen Mac. They’ve jerked off together, watching porn in the same room when they were too irate to take turns, but it’s different. They were always quiet when they watched porn, always avoided sneaking a glance. So Dennis doesn’t really know what he looks like when he’s about to come, he doesn’t even really know what he sounds like. He knows, objectively, that he’s probably been in the same apartment with Mac as he has sex with someone, but he’s never actually heard him. Maybe he was just quiet during sex. Maybe Dennis could change that. Draw out the sounds with his mouth. He’d like to try.
“—I don’t know about shit like that, ask Mac!” Charlie’s voice cuts through his reverie, and before he can fully bring himself back into the present, Mac had already collected himself and joined the discussion between the rest of the gang. Dennis is vaguely impressed that Mac was able to pull himself away from Dennis so quickly. Generally, when they got like this, Mac would cling onto his side for hours on the off chance that Dennis would suddenly change his mind. How ironic, Dennis thinks to himself as he observes the gang, that the first time that Mac wasn’t hoping to steal a kiss was the time where Dennis was most likely to kiss him. He finishes his beer and considers what he’s going to talk to his shrink about in their next session.
*
When he arrives at the office the next day, Dennis had made up his mind. He needed to go for it, at least once in his life. Since his and Mac’s talk the day previously, it had been all he was able to think about; about his lips on Mac’s lips, his skin on Mac’s skin. And Mac was his best friend, one of the only people on the entire planet that he cares about (illegitimate children residing in different states aside; that was a hole he didn’t have time to fall down right now), and they’d be able to work things out afterwards. Sure, maybe Mac was in love with him. But maybe they’d have sex, and they’d be able to still part as friends, and Mac would be able to move on and be with another person.
He mentions this train of thought specifically in the session. Dr. Whatever stares at him, looks as though he’s thinking very hard about what Dennis has said.
“You say Mac is in love with you,” he says, after a moment of uncomfortable silence where Dennis didn’t know what to do with his hands. “Wouldn’t you then assume that a casual hookup might not be the best thing in mind?”
Dennis shakes his head, not quite following along. Casual hookups always worked for Dennis, except the times where they blew up spectacularly in his face. “Why wouldn’t it? Mac’s a big boy. He can handle his own emotions, especially if I’m clear that it’s a strictly casual arrangement.”
Dr. Whoever doesn’t reply again for a moment. Another moment of Dennis fidgeting, picking at his knuckles with his nails. Finally, “and that’s what you want? A casual relationship with Mac?”
Dennis rejects the implication he’s making, just out of spite, but quickly follows it up with genuine consideration. Is that what he wants?
“I only ask because, though you’ve talked very little about your current relationship with Mac, I’ve been able to get a basic understanding of the dynamics you two share. You mentioned that people used to mistake you two for a couple. Why do you think that is?”
“Because we’re close,” Dennis says, more of a suggestion than an answer. “He is my best friend.”
“He’s your best friend, and you’re attracted to him, sexually.” Dr. Who-Gives-A-Shit is talking slowly now, as if Dennis were an idiot, and if he weren’t paying so much attention to what he was actually saying, he’d probably be pissed. “You’re his best friend, and you’ve said previously that he is in love with you.
“Yes.”
“Why then, do you think that you’re so adamantly against being with him in a more romantic context? Do you think that there’s a possibility that you might love Mac back?”
Dennis doesn’t have an answer, doesn’t know what to say. Is there a possibility? He did know that he loves Mac, that kind of love that he feels for Charlie and Dee, where he would never in a million years say it but they all kind of assumed it to be true. And it was true that those feelings of familiar love, that sweet, soft affection that he held for Mac was definitely stronger than what he felt for the rest of the gang. But that was just Mac and Dennis stuff. They were best friends, they were the two in the group who were bonded most strongly, except for maybe Frank and Charlie, but it was different. Frank didn’t want to have sex with Charlie. Charlie didn’t look at Frank sometimes and think about what it would be like to nuzzle his face into the crook of his neck, of smelling the aftershave and the cologne and the scent of Mac that was unique and of its own. (And shit, when had that happened?) Yeah, he loved Mac, wanted to kiss him, wanted to hold him, wanted to have sex with him, but could their relationship be as straightforward as that? Was Dennis just in love with him the whole time?
The seed of that idea, once planted, takes root somewhere in the base of Dennis’ spine. He finds that he likes the idea, likes the thought that all these years were building to something, that the reason that he had such an attachment to another man when he’s in his 40’s isn’t entirely due to him being an co-dependant, incompetent loser who owned a failing bar with his sister, his fake dad, his high school drug dealer, and a man who regularly drank paint.
The good Dr. W, satisfied that what he said had caused a significant enough epiphany in the other man, ends the session there. He half listens as he says his customary goodbye, half listens as he tells Dennis to just think things over, give himself some time, but fuck that. Dennis leaves his office in a bit of a daze, holding his phone to his chest in case he forgets it somewhere. Once he’s seated at the wheel of his car, he unlocks his phone and quickly pulls Mac up on Find My Friends. He’s still at the apartment, probably waiting for Dennis to come home before they head down to the bar. Dennis turns on the car, shifts into gear, and heads home.
His mind is busy the entire way there. He barely even screams at the other drivers, letting people cut him off and drive 10 below the speed limit. He thinks about Mac, about what he’s going home to do. They need to have a serious discussion about it first, he thinks. There would be no point in moving forward if they weren’t on the same page about this. He wanted to know what Mac thought. He was pretty sure that he knew what the other man’s feelings would be, but there was always a possibility that he was wrong. What if he went in there, and he was too late? Mac had already emotionally moved on. Or literally moved on, and there was another man in the picture? Would that be worse, he wonders? He imagines the two of them having sex, and imagines himself being the one more into it, the one who it matters more to. That kind of vulnerability terrified him. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than throwing himself at Mac, and Mac going along with it just to get laid. His grip tightens on the steering wheel. Mac wouldn’t do that, he reminds himself. Dennis might do that, but Mac would never. Mac was too good.
He’s still slightly incredulous about the whole thing. Yesterday morning, he’d never have considered bursting into the apartment and declaring his love for Mac. Shit, even this morning, he’d still not have thought it possible. He frowns, but it’s not like he’s going to change his mind now. He’s not a fate kind of guy, but how can he ignore this? If it could have all meant something greater? His hands shake with manic energy, but that probably doesn’t mean anything.
He parks in his regular spot, and he makes himself get out of the car and head into their apartment right away. He knows that if he hesitates, if he tries to avoid it, that he’ll end up never doing it. And he wants to. He really wants to try. He stops at the door for a half second, sucking in a deep breath before letting himself in.
There’s music playing from somewhere in Mac’s room, door left wide open. The shower is running. Mac probably just got back from the gym, or something. Dennis hovers, unsure of what to do. He’s trying to seduce Mac here, after all. Should he go into the bathroom? That might be a bit too bold, even for Dennis. He doesn’t have much time to consider as he crosses the room to sit down on the couch, because he hears the sound of the taps in the shower switching off. Perfect timing. He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, and he buries his face in his hands. He’s suddenly nervous, more nervous than he had been in the car. His breathing is coming in rapidly, and he can hear that annoying little voice in his head saying, is this all a mistake?
The bathroom door opens before he can spiral any further. Dennis pulls his head out of his hands, craning his neck towards the bathroom door. He gasps, sharply.
“Dennis!” Mac grins. “You’re back. How was it?”
Dennis doesn’t respond, can’t respond. He’s sitting there, glued to his seat, and his entire body feels like it goes numb. Mac is standing there in all his glory, a superbly wet Adonis in their living room. He’s completely naked, save for the towel tied carefully around his waist. It shows off the cut of his abs, the tight V that slopes down, hinting towards what’s underneath. It’s like Dennis’ brain is short circuiting, some wires crossing, so the only conscious thought that he’s capable of thinking is an alarm going off in his head, hot, hot, hot, hot . Mac is hot, Mac is so hot.
A beat, and the smile is starting to drop off of Mac’s gorgeous face. “Den? You okay?”
His smile is fading, which drives Dennis to his feet. He wants to be closer, wants to be next to Mac, wants him to smile again, because there’s something about Mac’s affectionate smile that makes his stomach do pirouettes inside of him. Is that love? Dennis doesn’t know, the clumsy nerves in his limbs still refusing to allow for feeling, but he’s being pulled closer to Mac by some invisible force that he can’t control.
Mac is the one to reach out, face a mask of concern. Fingertips, still pruned from spending too long under the spray of the shower grasp onto Dennis’ shoulders, and his warm hands prevent him from collapsing down into a puddle at Mac’s feet. They’ve been here a thousand times before, a million times, just two roommates standing in their living room together, Dennis leaning on Mac for support when his words are failing him and his brain is going haywire. A thousand different days, and Mac has been there for him the whole time. Dennis doesn’t feel, but rather sees his own hand, trembling slightly as it hangs in the air in front of Mac’s face while he makes contact, thumb coming to rest on his jaw, other fingers creeping into Mac’s hairline. Mac’s mouth falls open, pretty lips forming a soft ‘o’, eyes dark. He’s waiting, they’re both waiting, holding their breath as Dennis’ right hand snakes up and mirrors his left. They’re standing there, Dennis holding Mac’s face firmly, Mac’s own hands still tightly gripping his shoulders, sliding down to elbows. He’s still half-naked.
The air is heavy, his lungs suck in oxygen greedily, and before his brain can fail him any further, Dennis surges forward and kisses Mac. He’s kissed Mac before, for schemes, for a joke when they were younger, but he has never kissed Mac like this before. And Mac responds quickly, eagerly, going from 0 to 100 in a handful of seconds. There’s no time for the kiss to be chaste, there’s too much riding on this, there’s 20 years’ worth of repression, of sideways glances, of fingers brushing as they walk beside each other down the street. And as Mac pulls him in closer, pressing his wet, 1000-degree torso against Dennis’ own, Dennis can’t imagine why he’d thought this might be a mistake. Every cell in his body opens up to Mac, ravenously accepting him in, rebelling against a lifetime of Dennis rejecting this. Dennis thinks to himself, yeah. This is love.
Mac is pushing, is always pushing, guiding Dennis backwards until the backs of his knees hit the couch. He sinks down, pulling Mac down with him, so the larger man is draped across his body, strong arms braced on either side of Dennis’ torso so that his weight isn’t crushing. Dennis could say something nasty about it, the weight, but then again, didn’t he always have something nasty to say, especially when it came to Mac? He doesn’t say it, the thought of it slipping away as Mac presses bruising kisses to his lips, to his cheeks, to his earlobes, to the sensitive skin near the hollow of his throat. Dennis is on absolute fire, both from the heat of Mac laying on top of him, and from the bonfire igniting him from the inside out. He’s running desperate hands up and down Mac’s back, mapping out the vast terrain, feeling for where the muscles bunch up into knots, and where he can feel them working with the exertion of holding himself up.
“Off,” Dennis breathes, and Mac obeys, immediately pulling back, pupils blown wide with arousal. Dennis wanted him off, wanted him off so he can pull off his own shirt, clumsily, collar getting caught on his chin. Mac follows his lead, helping Dennis escape from his own shirt, still only wearing a fucking towel that has by some miracle remained wrapped around his waist. Dennis takes the opportunity while Mac isn’t pressed against him to grab at his chest, feeling his abs, his pecs, greedily memorizing the topography. He’s lost count of the amount of times he’s salivated over this, over the firmness of Mac’s muscular body. (The word ‘beefcake’ is starting to lose its meaning in his own head.) His fingers circle his pecs, thumb running over his nipples experimentally, eyes flickering up to Mac’s face to gauge his reaction. Mac isn’t looking at him anymore, face tilted up with eyes screwed shut. The set of his jaw is sharp, as if he’s actively trying to keep himself quiet, afraid of breaking Dennis out of whatever spell that has come over him. Dennis feels a deep tug inside of him, arousal coiling up deep in his bones. He wants to have sex with Mac, wants to feel him inside of him, but there’s also a very real part of him that wants Mac to enjoy this just as much as he is. It’s fairly unusual—Dennis generally doesn’t care if the other person gets off, as long as he does. But for Mac, Dennis wants this to go well, wants to be the one getting Mac off, and not the other way around.
“C’mon, baby boy,” Dennis coos, using that special tone of voice that he reserves exclusively for Mac. “Wanna hear you. Don’t you want me, too?”
Mac’s eyes pop open, looking down at Dennis with a half incredulous, half reverential look on his face. “’Course I want you, Den.”
“Then why don’t you show me, big guy?” Dennis is teasing now, openly goading Mac into it. And Mac takes the bait, dropping down to smash their mouths back together. If Dennis is desperate for it, Mac is doubly so, letting off soft, satisfied moans as they kiss, legs slotting together as they begin to clumsily make out a rhythm. Dennis can feel Mac now, towel finally falling off through the movement, the hard line of Mac’s dick pressing against Dennis’ pant leg. He’s furious that he’s still clothed but found it hard to find an opportunity to address it, with the twitching and jerking of his own hips against Mac. He’s going to bust in his jeans, like a 15-year-old boy, but he finds himself completely unwilling to slow his dry humping.
One of Mac’s hands are sliding down his body, and then he’s twisting them both around so that he no longer has to fully support his own weight. His inquisitive hand searches, roaming over Dennis’ hips, until they close in on their target, the button on the top of his jeans. He pops open the button (and Dennis is coherent enough to be vaguely impressed that he could do it with only one hand. Must have had practice with someone else, he thinks to himself, before shooing off that train of thought before it can pick up any speed), slides down the zipper, and grasps Dennis’ dick overtop his boxers. A low, dirty groan escapes Dennis’ mouth, because even though there’s still a cloth barrier between Mac’s hand and his dick, the sturdy pressure of Mac’s hand is enough to make him rock hard, if he hadn’t already been before.
Mac pauses for the length of a single breath, and then he moves his hand again, thumbing at the tip of Dennis’ cock with a considering look on his face. When Dennis lets out another groan, he grins. “You like that?”
Dennis scoffs as best as he can with Mac’s tight grip on him. “’Course I like it. Do you not like hand jobs?”
Mac laughs, light and airy. “Who said anything about a hand job?” Countering his point, his hand starts to pick up speed, stroking him through his boxers as best as he can.
Dennis doesn’t want to even grace that with a reply, unsure of whether he liked the teasing over Mac’s worshipful silence from before. Instead, he thrusts his hips forward into Mac’s grip, encouraging him to speed things up. “Touch me,” he orders after a moment, despite his best efforts to not say anything at all, but he’s getting really rather desperate to have Mac touch his dick proper.
Mac laughs again, giddy, but he relents, releasing Dennis just to slip his hand below his boxers before resuming his stroking. As soon as he can feel Mac’s actual hand on him, a filthy moan escapes from Dennis’ panting mouth. A flash of a memory rushes to the surface, thinking about that night in the bar when those twinks had been fawning over Mac’s hands. How jealous would they be of him if they could see him now, Mac eagerly working him over?
The thought of their envy only spurns him on further, and he knows that this is going to be over embarrassingly quickly if things continue on their current trajectory. He groans again, in frustration this time, and pushes at Mac’s chest with both of his hands. Mac’s a wall, and he knows that Mac only moves because he lets him do it, but that doesn’t matter. Mac releases Dennis’ dick, hand slipping out of his pants. Dennis keeps shoving until Mac is back sitting on the couch, thighs spread wide, and it’s only then that Dennis gets a real good look at Mac’s nakedness.
It’s… intimidating. Dennis has seen Mac naked before—they have lived together for a very long time—but this is so conspicuously different than any other time. This wasn’t sneaking a peek at Mac in the locker room at the gym, this wasn’t like when Charlie had pulled down his pants as a joke in the bar just to find out that Mac wasn’t wearing any underwear, this wasn’t even like when Dennis’ eyes had, okay, maybe occasionally wandered during one of their jerk off sessions. This was Mac, lounging before him, cock red and hard, waiting for Dennis.
In the time that Dennis has been looking at the other man, Mac had started lazily jerking himself off. “You gonna do something?” He asks with a smug look that Dennis wants to kiss off. And there’s no reason for him not to, so he does. He shucks off his own jeans, kicking at the resistance around the ankles, and then sinks down to straddle Mac. He kisses him, deeply, Mac’s hands coming to rest lightly on his hips, fingers pressing in hard enough that Dennis bites Mac’s bottom lip in retaliation. This isn’t the time for it, not right now while they’re still just rutting on the couch in their living room, but Dennis can already tell that the biting turns Mac on. It definitely turns Dennis on, the pressure that Mac could inflict on him, but again. Not the time.
Dennis kisses languidly, a relaxation spreading out through his limbs the longer this goes on. It feels so good, he’s a bit irritated that they haven’t done this sooner. He supposes that it’s his own fault; it wasn’t as if Mac hadn’t practically been throwing himself at Dennis for the last 20 years. Mac’s mouth feels good against his, lips that had been a bit clumsy when they’d just started finally getting into the real rhythm of it, and it’s such a heady feeling. He’s into it, Mac’s definitely into it, so when Dennis pulls away—again—he’s not surprised with Mac’s huff of irritation. He smirks down at him, satisfied with the petulant little frown he receives in return, but wastes no further time in sliding down until his knees hit the floor. He kneels in between Mac’s meaty thighs, and he’s definitely salivating.
Mac’s eyes are wide, previous hints of snark seemingly evaporated into thin air at the sight of Dennis on his knees. And Dennis fucking loves it, loves the way the other man’s eyes are glued to his every movement. He rests his elbows on the couch, face only inches away from Mac’s dick, but instead of wrapping his lips around his it, he presses his mouth to the insides of his thighs, peppering light kisses all over. Mac’s groan is pornographic, and Dennis can hear the neediness, the unspoken plea in the way he throws his head back to rest on the back of the couch. Mac’s hips twitch just as Dennis is switching to the opposite thigh, bumping the base of his dick against Dennis’ mouth.
“Hey,” Dennis’ voice is low, already sounds wrecked, and knows it’s going to sound even worse by the end of this. “Behave.”
Mac whines in response, but his hips still. And Dennis must be a really, really nice person, because he decides to give Mac a break. He wraps his right hand around the base of Mac’s dick—a quick, startled gasp escaping Mac’s mouth as he does so—and experimentally licks a stripe up the length of it. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it tastes like every other dick he’s ever tasted in his life, though the fact that he’s just gotten out of the shower definitely helps. Having passed the taste test, Dennis nods almost imperceptibly, and gets back into it with a bit more enthusiasm. He takes the tip into his mouth, tongue swirling around the weeping head. With the hand still wrapped around the base, he begins lazily jerking up and down, using his thumb every other time to swipe over his balls, a gentle movement, as if to reassure his balls that he hasn’t forgotten that they were there.
It can’t have even been a minute, and Mac has already forgotten Dennis’ warning as Dennis had gotten into it. While Dennis is sucking with more enthusiasm, taking more and more of the length with every bob of his head, Mac’s hands had crept down and were slinking their ways through Dennis’ curls. The fingers at the base of his skull give a soft tug, and Dennis responds automatically, keening, dick popping out of his mouth. Mac doesn’t look impressed, but Dennis can’t help it, loves the feeling of his hair being pulled, and he palms at his own dick before taking Mac back into his mouth. Soon, every time Dennis bobs up, Mac tightens his grip in his hair. Every time he bobs back down, the grip loosens. Dennis is still very much in control of the rhythm, but every time Mac pulls his hair with a bit more strength than the time before, it feels as though Mac is the one in charge. Dennis thinks it’s very sexy, his body very quickly becoming accustomed to the idea of almost submitting to Mac, but not quite. He could never fully give up control, but it was fun to pretend, especially as it caused such filthy things to slip out of Mac’s mouth.
“Yeah, look at you, look how much you want my dick. Come on, want that throat, come on.”
It’s a little high school, Dennis thinks privately, but it’s definitely still working for him. In response, he sinks down as far as he can, willing himself to relax as he feels Mac’s cock invade the back of his throat. Mac’s lucky this isn’t his first blowjob, lucky that this is a skill he’s honed to perfection, if he does say so himself. He holds it there, feeling his knees start to tremble underneath him with the effort he’s expending. Mac’s hands are tight, Dennis’ scalp searing. When he finally pulls back off, fully, a long trail of saliva dribbles out from his lips. Mac looks down at him like he’s just seen an angel, and Dennis preens. Inspired, he leans further down and mouths sloppily at his balls, enjoying the sharp squawk he hears above him.
He’s jerking himself off in earnest now, working himself over in the kind of rhythm that he knows will get him off soon. When he moves off Mac’s balls and back onto his cock, he matches the speed of his hand to the rhythm of his mouth. He’s deepthroating him every other time now, Mac’s muttering has gone nonsensical, and he isn’t given a warning when Mac finally comes. He’s sunk down deep when it happens, can feel his cock almost sputter just before and then pulse inside his mouth. He moves back, slightly, but the hands on the back of his head keep him from moving off completely. The grip tightens again, and he looks up, Mac’s mouth open wide as he gasps out his orgasm, eyes screwed shut. He’s gorgeous, so fucking gorgeous, and when Mac’s eyes flicker open and the two of them make eye contact, that’s enough for Dennis. He comes, and it’s the best orgasm he’s had in—well, he doesn’t know exactly how long, but in a while. His vision whites out for a minute, and he ascends out of his body. He thinks he might be in heaven, but the good kind of heaven, not Mac’s bullshit version of it. A heaven where Dennis is warm, and loved, and beautiful, and Mac’s there too, because every version of heaven that Dennis could imagine has Mac there beside him.
The vision fades, and it leaves him sitting on his feet, knees pressed painfully onto the wood floor. Mac had released him, arms hanging limply at his sides as if he had just run a marathon. Dennis can still taste Mac’s come in his mouth, having swallowed most of it out of necessity, but he can feel some of it mixed with saliva dribbling past his lips onto his chin. He must be quite the sight.
There’s a moment where they just sit there, staring at each other. Mac, clearly still recovering, still has the presence of mind to look at Dennis as though he’s never actually seen another human face before. Dennis stares back, falling back onto the floor in a more comfortable seating position with his back pressed against the coffee table. As the oxygen returns to the room and Dennis is able to breathe again, so too is he able to think coherent sentences. A deep flush rises up his body the longer they both sit there, just looking at each other. He knows this is the time that he should be saying something. This is the time that Mac should be saying something, too. He’d just blown Mac, after all. Isn’t it time for Mac to do a little heavy lifting?
Dennis’ face is fully red, any hint of their previous flirtations wiped completely out of his mind. His mind is racing, but he’s at a complete loss. He’s never really been in this situation before, and he feels fully out of depth. If this were just some random person, he’d be able to think up some line that would prevent this situation from plummeting into awkwardness, but his head is betraying him. Say you love him, his brain urges him, but his mouth remains unresponsive.
After a moment, Mac clears his throat. “So…” But then he trails off. He doesn’t know what to say either. Something deep inside of Dennis burns, embarrassment flooding his body.
In the end, his ego is the only thing to bail him out. He looks fucking ridiculous just sitting there, gaping up at the other man. He wipes at his mouth, his drooling chin, with the back of his arm, rising up to his feet. His eyes move to his phone, tossed carelessly on the coffee table, alerting him to the time. It’s nearly 4. He can’t believe he’s done this in the afternoon, when they both have work after this. If he had done this at night, at least he’d be able to slink off to sleep after. But now he’s going to have to drive Mac to Paddy’s, and he’s going to have to talk to the gang all night without acting as if anything was different. Because that’s what they were going to do, they were going to act as if nothing had ever happened. His brain, or maybe it’s his heart, shrieks incessantly in disapproval of that plan, but honestly, it’s the only thing that Dennis can think of that will prevent him from dying from shame right there, naked in their living room.
He fakes a laugh, not even fooling himself. It’s too high pitched, strange. It gets caught on the back of his ruined throat, stinging just a little bit. “Uh, well. I’m gonna take a quick shower. Then we’ll head to the bar?”
Mac continues staring at him, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. He opens his mouth, as if to question Dennis further, but the other man is already retreating, bathroom door clicking shut before he has a chance to say anything. He doesn’t follow him, to Dennis’ relief.
He turns on the shower before taking a cursory look at himself in the mirror, as he does every time he passes an even vaguely reflective surface. He looks, well, he looks as if he’s just been sucking someone’s dick. His lips were swollen and red, his eyes glassy, and there’s still spit and come dripping down his neck. He wipes at his eyes, furiously, but it just makes it look worse. Now it looks as though he’s been sucking dick and crying. He screws his eyes shut, and gets into the shower, relying mainly on muscle memory. If he slips and falls, he doesn’t think that’d be the end of the world.
Once under the spray of the shower (far too hot, hotter than he usually likes but he doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with turning it down), Dennis lets himself lose it a little bit. “Fuck,” he hisses to himself. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He clenches his fists into little balls, and he wants to hit the wall, but he knows that Mac will hear it, so he punches at his thigh. Just once, and definitely not even hard enough to bruise; just enough that he can release some of the weird, furious energy that is pulsing through him. He’s furious, fucking livid with himself, because there’s no one else to blame but him. He’d ran into the apartment, and threw himself on the poor man, and Mac had been, what? His brain struggles to come up with something, anything to twist this situation around and somehow make it Mac’s fault. Mac had used him, he thinks, but he’s dismissing that thought almost at the same time as it comes to him. What, then? If nothing nefarious on the other man’s part, what does he think this could be seen as? His brain is firing rapidly now, insecurity roaring up to meet him. Does he think that Mac had just been too polite for a nice, “thanks, but no thanks”? Had Mac not wanted that at all?
Eyes still shut, he sucks in a deep, gasping breath as he lets the spray wash off the sweat and come from his body. Think about this logically . Logic and reason told him that Mac was not just too polite to turn him down. If Mac hadn’t wanted to get his dick sucked in their living room, he would have no problem in telling Dennis and Dennis would have backed down. And if Dennis knew nothing else, he knew that Mac cared about him, loved him, wanted to be with him. It was a fact of nature, like water being wet and the sun being a huge burning ball of hot gas. If he had been capable of speech, Dennis knew that if he had talked to Mac and told him that he wanted to be his boyfriend, or whatever, Mac would have agreed to it. So why didn’t he just do it?
He’s frustrated with himself, with his own cowardice. It hadn’t even been an hour since he’d left his psychiatrist’s office with his mind firmly made up. He had been nervous, sure, but he hadn’t been able to foresee him completely botching the conversation part of this whole thing. He always knew what to say, especially with Mac. To be left there, desperately trying to keep his head above choppy water had been humiliating in and of itself. Mac could see it, plain as day, the extreme effort that it had taken Dennis to just extract himself from the situation. He wondered what Mac thought it all meant, if Dennis had just been particularly horny and was now regretting what had transpired. If nothing else, he should let Mac know that that wasn’t the case. Should let him know that he’s just weak instead.
He doesn’t linger in the shower, just stays long enough that he’s sure he’s clean and that he’s also not crying. He forgoes all of his usual shower rituals, applies no treatments or moisturizers. By the time that he’s towelling himself off (with one of the large hand towels they kept hanging by the sink; he hadn’t stopped to get his from his room), he thinks that he feels a bit more sane, a bit better equipped to face the rest of the day. He applies a bit of light concealer, just enough to hide the bags under his eyes. He looks at himself in the mirror again just before exiting the bathroom, and he thinks that he might look almost normal. His lips are still more pink than usual. But his eyes are clear, and he makes up his mind. He’s going to tell Mac that it hadn’t been a mistake, that he liked him, and that he wanted to blow off work and crawl into bed together. He nods, then exits.
Mac is still waiting for him on the couch, but he’s clearly moved in the meantime. He’s fully dressed now, for one, wearing jeans and with his chest regrettably covered in a soft blue anti-bullying shirt. He’s also tidied up a bit, Dennis’ abandoned clothes folded neatly on the shelf next to Dennis’ room, couch cushions rearranged so it no longer looks as though they’d just been rolling around on them. Mac looks up at him, a bit wary, but he smiles, and Dennis feels his heart flutter. It’s a complete role reversal, Mac on the couch and Dennis emerging half naked from the shower. But Dennis clutches the towel to himself, covering up as best as he can, as if frightened of the other man seeing his body again.
“We’d better get going,” Dennis hears himself say. “I’ll just be a minute.” Mac nods, picking up his phone and unlocking it. His smile falls, and Dennis is powerless to stop it. He goes to his room instead.
*
It’s not like this kind of thing hadn’t happened before. Dennis had known Mac for what feels like an eternity sometimes, of course this kind of thing has happened before. Not the kiss, not the blowjob, it had always ended before this thing between them became physical, but that was just it— this thing. It followed him wherever he went; followed him back when he was 18, going off to Penn, followed him when he was 40, flying to North Dakota, and everywhere in between. He’d always known, but rarely did he ever acknowledge it, acknowledge that their relationship might be more than friendship, because Dennis had been able to keep a respectable distance between the two of them.
Back when the attraction was new, and mysterious, and scary, Dennis had just thought that he’d be able to ignore it, and it would eventually go away. That was back when Mac had been ignoring it too, back when any insinuation that he might be anything other than heterosexual had been the ultimate insult at his masculinity. But even back then, even back when Mac was his most repressed, his most hateful, he’d never been hateful with Dennis. They’d be hanging out in Dennis’ dorm room, or at the shitty bar they used to frequent before they had Paddy’s, and Mac would catch his eye and just smile, that little, tiny one, that Dennis knew was just for him, and his heart would pound in his chest and he’d think about girls with big tits. And even later, after Dennis had come to accept that maybe he might like boys too, he still wouldn’t entertain even the concept of being with Mac, because by then, Mac was too important to him. Too close. If he made a move, Mac would reject him. He might be able to encourage him into bed, if they were drunk or high or some combination of the two, but that’d be the end of it. Mac wouldn’t ever come back. And Dennis might hate himself, but he knew that he’d hate himself even more if he ever did that to Mac.
And so they drifted around each other, in and out of each other’s orbits, as if they weren’t the only thing in the other’s entire fucking sky. And they had these moments, those awful, weird, wonderful moments, where they’d drift just a bit too close, where every careful boundary they’d built around the other threatened to come crashing down, just to make a sudden 180 degree turn back into friendship.
There was a time in their senior year of high school, where he’d snuck Mac into his bedroom, back at the old mansion, and they’d brewed shrooms into tea and Dennis had gotten so freaked out that Mac had to hold him still in his bed, comforter pulled tight over their heads as the world spun around and around. He’d been so close to Mac, and he’d been fucking scared of whatever was waiting for them outside the blanket, but he’d known in his heart that as long as Mac was there with him, everything would be okay. When he finally sobered up a little while later, he’d turned his head to face the other boy, and there was glitter or starbursts or something flashing out of Mac’s eyes— and okay, maybe he wasn’t completely sober— and he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his entire goddamn life. He didn’t say it, but he knew it. He knew in that moment that there’d never be another face that he wanted to look at more than he wanted to look at Mac’s. Mac had smiled, and there was an orchestra playing somewhere, building up to something but then— nothing. Mac poked him in the side, drawing out giggles. The moment passed.
Or, the night they’d first moved in together. Dennis had stolen his dad’s credit card, had spent the day shopping for furniture with Mac, but the big stuff wouldn’t arrive until the next day. So they’d taken all their furniture, which consisted of Mac’s smelly mattress from his mom’s house, and all the assorted knick-knacks that two dudes in their early twenties acquire while furniture shopping— meaning, nothing actually useful, except maybe a lamp or two— and spread it all into the big empty living room. Charlie had been there too, but he’d fallen asleep hours earlier, propped up against a wall with a bottle of beer in his hand, and Mac and Dennis had tucked themselves in on the floor mattress, a bit drunk but giddy off the excitement of finally having their own place together. And, sure, maybe Dennis was getting himself into these moments, because they always happened while in bed with Mac, but it just so happened that his lifestyle afforded a lot of time spent with Mac in various beds. It didn’t count, though, because this time, he was facing away from the other man. Mac had, very hesitantly, placed an arm across Dennis’ waist, not saying anything, and so Dennis didn’t say anything either. They fall asleep like that, Mac half pulling Dennis’ body up against his own.
The point is, this kind of thing has happened. It happened more frequently once Mac finally accepted himself, finally came out of the closet, where Dennis had finally been allowed a chance to wonder… what would happen? When their hands found each other’s in the dark, when they caught the other’s eye from across the room, and neither looked away. What would happen? By that point though, Dennis was already used to the routine, was used to pushing everything of that nature down so deep that he could hardly remember it was there. They had their moments, and then they’d move on. Status quo. It never meant anything before— though, he’s starting to wonder how true that had ever been— and it didn’t have to mean anything now, as far as Mac was concerned.
It was just how things were.
*
They’re at the bar by 5, after an uncomfortable ride in the new Rover. Neither had been quiet, chatting more than they ever really chatted in the car, pointing out every meaningless landmark they passed in an attempt to ensure that they never lapsed into silence. Dennis hates himself for it, but then again, Mac doesn’t attempt to broach the subject himself, so he assumes they’re on the same page for this. They both have a lot to say about what happened, but neither want to put in the work to talk about it. So they don’t, and they get to the bar in record time because Dennis doesn’t take his foot off the gas practically the entire time. Mac waits for him to gather up his things, and they walk into Paddy’s together, like they always do. Dennis just hopes that there’s something going on with one of the others that he can immerse himself in.
The bar is completely dead, beside Dee and Charlie playing darts in the corner. Frank sits in one of the booths beside them, only paying attention to a noisy video that is playing on his phone. The three of them look up as Mac and Dennis walk in, but they only grunt their acknowledgements of the two men before getting back to their own devices.
“I need a drink,” Dennis mumbles, only loud enough for Mac to hear. He makes his way over to the bar, hearing Mac call after him to grab him one too as the other man walks over to where Dee and Charlie are now arguing over who won. Once behind the bar, he opens the fridge and peers inside, wondering what Mac would want. Should he just get them both beers or make them something a bit stronger?
Dennis decides on stronger, knows that he needs something with at least 40% alcohol content in order to get through what is sure to be a mind-numbingly boring shift where he and Mac are going to be avoiding eye contact the entire time. He makes them both a drink, tossing together a bit of this and that, more random than anything else. He’s a professional, so he knows what he can add to make it taste (slightly) better than jet fuel but will still knock them the fuck out before the night is over. He looks at his concoctions, practically sees them bubbling, and shrugs, gathering the glasses up in one hand. On a whim, he also reaches back into the fridge and grabs 2 bottles of beer. If they were going to forget that Mac’s dick had been halfway down his esophagus earlier that day, they might as well have a beer too.
He walks over to the group, setting the drinks down in front of where Mac has settled in the booth across from Frank. The man smiles, thinly, but avoids eye contact as he mumbles a quick, “thanks”. Dee is shrieking about her victory, while Charlie jeers her, waving his hands dismissively as he heads over to the booth. Charlie throws himself beside Frank, and Dennis and Mac both freeze as they realize that Dennis is going to have to sit beside Mac now. Dennis blinks, once, twice, then moves into action, sliding himself onto the dirty seat with a lot more grace than Charlie had. Mac scoots over, giving him as much room as possible. They have a good amount of space between the two of them, which makes Dennis breathe a sigh of relief. Then—
“Move over, asshole. I’m sitting too.” Dee, with about as much finesse as a rampaging elephant, shoves herself on the other side of Dennis, pushing him even further into Mac than before. The two men exchange quick, panicked glances, before Dennis is wiping his face clean and sliding up against Mac. They can’t let on that anything is different. They’ve sat this close to each other countless times. This time is no different than any other. It’s fine that their thighs are pressed together under the table. Dennis takes a drink of his mixed drink. It’s every bit as strong as he was hoping.
“What, come to gloat, Dee?” Charlie asks accusingly, eyes narrowed.
Dee’s smile is icy. “Why, yes, actually. Yes I am. Because you see—”
Dee launches into a rant, something about her superiority in games of skill, because she is whatever she believes herself to be that day. Dennis instantly tunes her out. She’s been going on these rants with more frequency lately. They remind Dennis of something, but he can never quite put his finger on it. Not that he really tries, Dee is boring as shit whenever she starts in on it. Charlie is already interrupting her, and Dennis tunes him out too. It’s a strange sensation, it’s as if the bar goes quiet for a minute, all fading into the background as Dennis retreats into his own skull. He sips at his drinks, alternating randomly between the beer and the mixed drink, feeling the comforting warmth of alcohol begin to make its way into his system. He’s not drunk, nowhere even close with the amount he drinks every single day, but he’s slipping into a nice place, elevated above the petty worries of being sober.
Idly, he begins tapping his fingers on the table. He looks at Frank, considers the wrinkles lining his face, comparing between what he sees, and his own face. He had been worried when he was younger, when he thought that Frank had been his father, that he might age like him, too. That he might shrivel up, lose about half his height, and go almost completely bald. Bruce Mathis still looked pretty good, the last time Dennis had saw him, and it’d been able to alleviate a lot of his fears.
His eyes wander to Charlie, who to his best estimate had been roaming around in the ducts again, judging by the fine layer of dust coating his entire body. Dennis winces just considering it. Charlie is too old to be crawling through the ducts in their bar. He was going to get stuck one day, and one of them would have to crawl in after him, and it would have to be either Dennis or Dee. Mac was too big, Frank was too old, and Dennis just knew that Dee would find a way to weasel out of it. Which left him, ruining his clothing while crawling around in an air duct because Charlie was a goddamn idiot.
Next, he looks at Dee, who is still going on and on, and the sound of it is shrill and annoying and is starting to give Dennis a headache. He generally isn’t as annoyed with Dee as he says he is, mostly just giving her shit because it’s just how they’ve always communicated with each other. But right now, she really is just annoying as shit. He stares at her, unafraid of being caught staring, and he analyzes her face. Her eyeshadow is smudged, smeared below her right eye, and her eyeliner is a bit uneven. It’s minor enough that he probably wouldn’t say anything, unless she started going in on him. He considers the wrinkles he sees on her face. With Dee, it was always a bit more like looking at himself. They’re not identical, obviously, but it’s still his twin sister, and he’ll always be able to see parts of him with her. He had forced her to start moisturizing properly a few years prior, scandalized by her mediocre routine of applying some drug store shit whenever she happened to remember to apply it. Her skin had made an improvement ever since.
Finally, he turns his gaze to Mac, who has already finished his mixed drink and is just nursing his beer. He looks a bit more at ease now, probably feeling the effects of the drink, and he grins when he notices Dennis looking at him. Dennis tilts his head towards him and smiles back, and it reassures him better than anything Mac could ever say to him. Sure, things had gotten a bit weird, a bit awkward, but they’d get through it, and it’d probably make them stronger for it. So what if Dennis still hadn’t confessed his very real feelings for the man? As long as Mac kept smiling at him like that, he didn’t care about anything else.
One of Dennis’ artfully arranged curls falls forward on his face, and Mac automatically reaches out to tuck it back up in with the rest. Dennis feels his breath hitch as he watches Mac do it, watches the man react unconsciously to the contact as Mac’s fingers brush against his forehead. He doesn’t even notice Dee, on his other side, pause mid-rant as Dennis almost nuzzles into Mac’s touch. She’s on his other side, can’t possibly see the minute movement, but she’s quiet, and Charlie and Frank are looking up from what they’re doing to see what had made Dee shut up.
Dennis doesn’t even notice at first, only does when Mac tears his eyes away from Dennis’ and glances at the other three. Dennis looks up, face still tingling, and feels himself flush when he realizes that they’re all looking at him. “What?” He asks, sharply, hoping that his tone alone will make them back off. It usually does; Dennis doesn’t back down from an argument.
It’s enough for Charlie and Frank to back down with just slightly bemused expressions, but Dee, as always, is a different story. She smiles, just as cold as her previous one, and Dennis knows that it could probably freeze him solid if he weren’t so used to seeing it in the mirror. “You two need a minute? We can leave you alone.”
Dennis feels Mac’s thighs tense up beside him. Dennis just rolls his eyes. “By all means, go. I’m sure we’d all appreciate a vacation from whatever the hell you’re talking about.”
“That’s not what I meant—” Dee starts, but Dennis has won the moment; Charlie and Frank snickering across from them, and Dee is already on the defensive. Mac is silent beside him, not saying anything at all as the twins begin bickering amongst themselves. Dennis doesn’t even really know why he’s fighting with her; the moment between Mac and him already forgotten by the other three, so there was no threat looming overhead. But he keeps arguing, because Dee says something about Mac being obsessed with him, and there’s something inside of him that can’t help himself from defending him. Probably because of his love, or whatever, but that’s irrelevant when they collectively as a group can write it off as Dee being annoying and Dennis fighting her like he fights her whenever she says something annoying.
Once the fight begins to peter out, both siblings growing bored and running out of things to bitch about, Dennis turns back away from her to glance at Mac. Mac’s on his phone, which Dennis doesn’t feel surprised about, because they had been arguing for a long while. Dennis watches as he scrolls through Facebook, reacting to some clickbait article with an angry face, something about frogs that Dennis doesn’t quite catch the headline to before Mac continues scrolling. He looks up after a minute, as if sensing Dennis’ eyes on him. His eyes drift to the rest of the group, and once confirming that they’re not paying attention, Mac gifts Dennis with another dreamy smile. He drops his left hand below the table, and pats at Dennis’ thigh, which sends a shockwave through his body, but it doesn’t appear to be sexual. Just a reassuring pat, as if to say thank you for defending him. Dennis smiles back, but doesn’t dare reach out, doesn’t dare reciprocate. They look at each other for another couple of seconds, then look away, continuing on with the night as if Dennis’ thigh isn’t still warm from Mac’s touch.
The weeks after follow the same pattern. They move on with their lives as if nothing had happened, and it’s a lot easier than Dennis expected. Mac is the exact same as he always had been after that first day, slipping back into the same patterns of fussing over Dennis as if he were his mother, pretending he knew martial arts, and drinking too much beer. Dennis goes back to pretending he doesn’t like to be fussed over, pretending he isn’t staring at Mac’s biceps as he paces through rooms doing karate chops, and also drinking too much beer.
They seem to be doing a good job pretending that nothing ever happened, because none of the rest of the group say anything about the two of them. Dennis catches Dee staring at them sometimes, when Dennis leans down and wipes a crumb off of the front of Mac’s shirt, or when Mac is massaging his shoulders after a particularly nasty screaming match Dennis had with a barista. But Dee doesn’t actually say anything, just gives Dennis that long, knowing look that says that she can see right through him. But what does she know? They’re not actually even doing anything.
And they’re not. They both retire to their own bedrooms at the end of each night, and if they share a few more heated glances than they might have before while they’re watching Predator, it’s not indicative of anything except a mutual love of great cinema.
Dennis knows that platitudes like that are completely meaningless, practiced in his own head as a desperate attempt to not let himself look like a fool. Because he would now, he would look like a fool. If he had said something right away, he might have been able to get away with expressing himself. But by now, it was too embarrassing. It was too raw. Too real inside of his own head, and his ego has a chokehold on him every single time he feels his mouth gape open with words that get lost somewhere along the way when he’s in Mac’s company.
Mac, to his credit, takes everything in stride. A small part of Dennis had thought that Mac would break right away, that he’d knock on his bedroom door one night on bended knees and beg Dennis to be with him properly. Beg Dennis to have sex with him, to let him inside, that he can’t eat, or sleep, or breathe without Dennis in his arms. But he didn’t, and the part of Dennis that had thought he might, felt increasingly bruised the more time went on.
It’s a couple weeks after the fact, and the group of twinks come back to the bar for their routine of pining over Mac. Dennis serves them their drinks, has Dee bring them their refills, but they still find excuses to call Mac over. The first time, it’s because one of them wants another refill, and Dennis and Dee are both busy with other customers. A couple of days after that, when they return again, it’s because one of them wants to read the graphic on Mac’s sleeveless shirt. This time it’s particularly brazen, as the one blonde one actually takes hold of Mac’s shirt with both hands, pulling the shirt flat as to read it better. When he lets go, Dennis clocks his hand brush briefly over his stomach, feeling the hard muscle. Dennis feels his fists clench when Mac doesn’t immediately retreat from the contact, says something quiet with a grin on his face, and the group around the table bursts out laughing.
That’s not even the worst of it. Mac’s constantly on his phone while they’re in the bar, and Dennis knows that he’s talking to guys on it. He knows Mac has Grindr, had laughed about it with Charlie before, but now every time he sees it open on Mac’s screen, he feels his blood start boiling. And he still goes out at night sometimes, slinks out of the apartment, or out of the bar, and Dee and Charlie will remark about how Mac really is getting laid a lot now that he’s out of the closet. These nights are particularly irritating to Dennis, when Mac has left and the gang has nothing better to do than to speculate on where he’s going, on what kind of guy he’s meeting up with, what they think Mac’s moves would be. Dee asks Dennis once, what Mac’s moves are, with a smirk on her face that Dennis wants to slap off. He doesn’t, keeps his cool, and he sips at his drink and shrugs. It’s truthful, too. He doesn’t know what Mac’s moves are, because he’s never seen him initiate.
Sometimes, just before Mac heads out to meet up with his dates, or when he’s being hit on by his admirers, he’ll look up, and his eyes will seek out Dennis. Dennis will always be staring back, hyperaware at all times of Mac’s location in relation to himself, and to any potential man who might be interested in Mac. Mac’s eyes will be curious, almost amused, and Dennis will smile at him, because he doesn’t know what else to do with his face. Sometimes it’ll be a nice smile, sometimes a cold one, sometimes it’ll be a smile that he hopes will distract Mac from whatever he’s doing and come over to talk to him instead. It’ll work, whenever he does smile like that, and Dennis will be able to lean into Mac’s presence, relax into whatever the other man wants to say to him, even if it’s about nothing interesting whatsoever.
It’s only when Mac brings one of his Grindr dates back to the bar that Dennis begins to feel the cracks. It’s a normal night, there’s only been a handful of their regulars, and Dennis was planning on skipping out early to steal Mac away for the night. Maybe they’d go see an actual movie, he had thought, in an actual movie theatre where Mac couldn’t just talk in his ear about men’s physique the entire time. Maybe they’d get some popcorn, and they’d share a drink, nothing too sugary but Dennis was willing to think about getting a sugar-free soda. He’s feeling sweet tonight.
His plan is effectively ruined when Mac rushes into the bar from the back office, a slightly worried expression on his face. He’s clutching his phone in hand, and he looks worried as he studies the rest of the gang, especially when his eyes land on Dennis. “Guys, guys, guys. I need you to do me a quick favour. Just a little one. No big deal.”
Charlie groans loudly, definitely a bit over the top. “What is it now, man?”
Mac chews his bottom lip thoughtfully. “The guy I’m meeting up with insisted on picking me up from here, and he wants to stop in and say hello.”
“I’m not hearing a favour in there, Mac.” Dee’s sitting right beside Dennis, and he can see her out of the corner of his eye shooting him a probing look. Dennis ignores her, focuses on proper breathing techniques, and counting the drinks that he’s had that night. There was the beer in his hand, the one he’d drank earlier, the shot of rum he’d done with Charlie…
“I just need you guys to be cool, I guess? Don’t be weird and scare him off?”
“When’s he gonna be here?” Frank grunts. “I should meet the guy you’re dating.” Something flares up in Dennis at that. Here Frank was, all paternal and protective, acting like a better father to Mac than he’d ever been to the children he’d raised. Dennis doubts he’d even treat Charlie like that, and he probably was his biological son.
“We’re not dating!” Mac rushes out, all at once, eyes once again flickering to Dennis. Dennis ignores him. “But he should be here any minute. He said he was just around the corner.”
As luck would have it, the front door swings open and in walks Mac’s date. He’s not an ugly man, by any means, but Dennis can already spot 20 flaws in his appearance and can imagine up another dozen in his character. He’s tall, his shoulders are broad, and he’s wearing an expensive looking leather jacket. He looks a bit older than Mac, hair greying, but still looks handsome.
Dennis doesn’t listen to anything any of them says from then on. He goes along with it, goes along with the motions, shakes the guy’s hand with teeth clenched firmly shut in a painful smile. Mac hovers the entire time Dennis is near his date, wringing his hands together with blatant nervousness which only makes Dennis angrier. He was being so painfully obvious, and while Dennis probably didn’t look the most natural he’s ever been, he knew he was handling this interaction a hell of a lot better than Mac. The two quickly leave, exchanging their pleasantries with the gang, Frank vaguely threatening him as they make their way out the door.
Once gone, Dennis turns around and resumes drinking, as if they’d never been interrupted. His head feels like he’s going through a tunnel, wind rushing around him, drowning out any other sound. After a minute, he realizes that Charlie is sitting beside him, and he’s just said something to him.
“What?” He asks, and it comes out sharper than he intended. Maybe he wasn’t as collected as he thought.
“Oh, just said that it was really lame of Mac to bring that guy here.”
A headache is rapidly developing in Dennis’ temples, and he really doesn’t have the patience or energy to deal with Charlie’s pity. He wonders when that happened, when they started looking at Dennis like he was something small and easily hurt. That’s not who he is. That’s not his brand. “Why would it be lame? Mac can do whatever he wants.”
Dee laughs meanly, standing on the other side of the bar, but doesn’t say anything else. Charlie stumbles clumsily over his words, saying something that Dennis stops listening to halfway through. He’s bored of this, bored of binge drinking with people who he’s not going to go home with, bored of being at the bar when all he wants is to be back at the apartment with Mac. But Mac is gone, Dennis is still drinking, is going to continue drinking, and afterwards will be too drunk to drive for a couple hours.
It’s his own fault, he reminds himself. If he just worked up the courage to say something to the man, he knew that Mac would drop all these Grindr floozies and be with him. But he didn’t say anything, he never said anything, and Mac probably just thinks everything is business as usual. That the blowjob had been a one-off thing, something that Dennis didn’t want to repeat, or even talk about. Could he really fault Mac for not being a mindreader? Especially when Dennis didn’t exactly have a good track record when it came to romantic relationships? Of course he thought it was a one-time thing.
Still, at least he can take comfort in the fact that this probably won’t happen again. He takes a long sip of his beer, considers how a whiskey will sit in his stomach. With how uncomfortable Mac clearly was bringing his hookups here, Dennis is sure that it will be a long time before he has to deal with anyone Mac is having sex with.
A week or so later, Mac brings a different guy back to the bar. And this time, they linger. Charlie and Dee are being insufferable about it, Dee chatting with the new guy while glancing at Dennis every 2.5 seconds, just to make sure that he sees her doing so. Mac still looks a bit uncomfortable, especially every time he has to interact with Dennis directly, but it doesn’t seem to stop him from openly flirting with the man. Dennis doesn’t fucking care, he throws back his drinks, and presses his nails so hard into the palm of his hand that it leaves marks, but he still talks and laughs and interacts with everyone as if it were any normal day and there wasn’t a stranger in their midst. He doesn’t bother learning the guy’s name, doesn’t speak to him any more than strictly necessary. It goes better than the time before, Mac eventually leading the man out, holding his hand, and Dennis resigns himself to another quiet night once he gets home. He considers, briefly, trying to find someone for him to have sex with, but ultimately dismisses the thought. It’s too much work, too much effort, and he’s cognizant of his own constantly crackling emotions to know that he’s probably not in a good state of mind to be having sex with random people.
The third time Mac brings someone to the bar, Dennis has had enough. It’s another new guy, just as handsome and vacant looking as before (Dennis wonders, had they all really looked as dumb as he thought they did? Or did he just think they looked dumb on principle?), and they’re sitting together in a booth, playing some sort of game that involved them grabbing each other’s hands a whole lot. Dennis stands behind the bar, pointedly not staring at the couple, polishing a glass that has been clean for the past 10 minutes.
Dee wanders out of the door leading to the basement, tip of her nose a bit red. She looks as if she’s been sniffing glue with Charlie, which honestly didn’t sound like such a bad idea right now. Dennis briefly considers going to find Charlie himself, but changes his mind as he sees his sister’s dull, faraway gaze as she sits down at one of the stools. She looks high as shit, and Dennis knows that as soon as the inhalants get involved, he’ll just want crack instead. And crack is definitely a big ‘no’ for him, as an emotionally imbalanced 40-year-old with a rapidly deteriorating body.
Dennis spends a dreamy moment remembering crack, before his attention snaps back into the present. Dee has spun around on her stool, back leaning against the edge of the bar, and she’s staring directly at Mac and his date. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”
He contemplates ignoring her, because honestly, she might not even notice, but ultimately gives in. He can tell she’s about to say something about Mac and his date, and it’s a safe bet that it’ll be something negative. It’s usually safe to assume that anything Dee says will be negative.
“What sucks?” He finally answers, placing the clean glass down on the counter and leaning on his elbows to hear her better.
“That!” Dee’s voice isn’t loud, but she’s gesturing wildly to the couple in the corner, and Dennis is shocked that they don’t even notice. “Mac pretending to date other guys. It’s gross.”
“I don’t think it’s pretending.” Dennis is staring at his own fingernails now, refusing to follow his sister’s gaze. “He doesn’t come home until morning half the time now.” It’s an exaggeration, but not by much, in his opinion.
She scoffs, sound cutting across the nearly empty bar, and this time, they do look up to see the source of the noise. Too high off inhalants, Dee is unapologetic, and she stares right back at them. And they must be weirded out by it, because they’re sliding out of the booth and heading towards the door. Mac calls out a quick farewell before they disappear onto the dark Philadelphia street.
Dennis releases a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. Dee twists around again on the stool, facing him directly. Because he leaned in earlier, their faces are just inches away from each other. “What is going on with you?” Dee demands.
Again, he thinks about just not answering. Dee couldn’t get anything out of Dennis that he didn’t want revealed to her. Sure, she could guess some things, but he could always just deny them. But her face is so close to his, and it reminds him of when they were little kids and they’d hide in the closet together, face to face, and whisper to each other their darkest secrets. At the time, it wasn’t as if their secrets were particularly heinous, just petty shit like, Dee stealing a bracelet off of their mom’s nightstand after she’d passed out drunk, or Dennis breaking a lamp in the living room and blaming it on the maid. But it was always very therapeutic, spilling every little secret inside of him, sharing it with someone that he knew wouldn’t rat him out, wouldn’t tell their parents. He wonders when they had stopped doing that, when he had stopped looking at Dee as a confidant and instead as a competitor.
His face cracks, and he closes his eyes. “Mac and I kissed a couple weeks ago.” He’s not going to talk to his sister about blowjobs.
Dee replies immediately. “And that’s new? I thought you’d been hooking up for years.”
“Nope.” He pops the word out of his lips. “And now everything is weird.” His eyes are still closed, and he can almost imagine Dee with a sympathetic look on her face. Can imagine her comforting him, saying the kind of soothing bullshit that people say to other people in the TV shows they used to watch as pre-teens, where everyone was nice to each other. But Dee is quiet, and even though his eyes are closed, he knows that if he opened them now, he’d be greeted by the cruel, uncaring façade of his sister. Maybe, somewhere deep down, she might really be thinking that soothing bullshit, might want to reach out and pat him on the shoulder as much as he wishes she was, but it was buried beneath the mountains of unresolved intimacy issues that Barbara and Frank had bestowed upon both of their children.
He opens his eyes, and Dee looks just as unsympathetic as he expected. She looks at him as if she were studying him, drinking in the vulnerability that he had revealed to her. “Then stop making it weird.” She shrugs, sitting back in her stool, diffusing the moment and letting the world back in on both of them. Dennis picks up the glass again and begins wiping it down anew.
Then stop making it weird, echoes in his head for hours after. Like it was supposed to be that easy? Like he was just supposed to flip a switch, and he and Mac would be able to stop doing this weird dance around each other? Stop making it weird? For who? It wasn’t weird, they weren’t weird when they were at the bar, where they had plenty distractions from staring at each other and remembering that afternoon where Dennis had embarrassed himself so thoroughly. How dare Dee even suggest that it was weird at the bar? She was supposed to compliment him, she was supposed to say she hadn’t noticed anything off. She clearly never had to deal with any of the other multitudes of weird moments that Dennis and Mac were sharing with each other, like all the times they’ve done something too soft, a hand reaching out to touch a stray strand of hair, the little smile Mac will give him as he places his peeled fruit down on the table at breakfast where Dennis is too sleepy to do anything but brush at Mac’s arm in thanks. They both ignore it, they both push past it, pretending that they don’t know the other one noticed it too.
Dee’s such a bitch. Stop making it weird . As if Dennis wasn’t trying.
Dennis doesn’t feel like sitting alone in his empty apartment, so he stays at the bar, drinking with Frank and Charlie and Dee, who all seem like they have nothing better to do, either. They play a drinking game, something they devised that’s a combination of Chutes and Ladders, Hungry Hippo, and beer pong that Dennis couldn’t explain if he tried. They all get gloriously drunk, Frank the first to slump over the bar and pass out, followed by Dee, then finally Charlie. It’s late, really, really late, and Dennis doesn’t have a care in the world as he dazedly watches the kind of garbage they show on TV when the only people watching are insomniacs, alcoholics and college students. He’s surrounded by his friends, passed out in various positions around him, and he’s satisfied with the knowledge that he will soon join them in unconsciousness.
The door to the alley creaks open and Mac steps inside before Dennis can fully realize he should be concerned about people walking in the bar when all of them are piss drunk. He looks nice, Dennis thinks, and he looks as if he either hadn’t had sex, or he had really fixed himself up after the fact. There’s a nice, pleasant flush to his face that Mac gets whenever he’s had a drink or two, and Dennis wants to kiss it, feel the warmth under his lips.
“Mac!” Dennis cries out, still managing to slur out the one syllable. He squints one eye shut as Mac approaches him, a wry smile on his face. “Whataya doin’ here?”
“Checked where you were, wanted to come see you.” Mac, though sounding considerably more put together than Dennis does, definitely doesn’t sound sober.
“What happened to your date?” Dennis hears himself asking, demanding. He needs to know, an urgent tugging in his stomach as he watches Mac fix himself a drink. Mac’s a shitty bartender, but an experienced alcoholic, so it balances itself out. Still makes something that Dennis knows is going to taste like shit.
Mac laughs a little to himself, a thought that Dennis cannot read, can’t even guess at, and it makes him more jealous than he’s ever been seeing Mac with his Grindr dates. “He was totally boring, dude. Left him at the Rainbow.”
“Oh, too bad.” Dennis lies, not even trying to sound like he feels anything but vindication at the news. Mac settles down on the stool beside him, and Dennis immediately closes in, slinking in to Mac’s side, hands grasping at his shoulder, down his arm to the man’s wrist. He loves Mac’s hands.
“Thanks. I like yours too.” Mac’s grinning, and Dennis doesn’t even care that he must have said that outloud. Dennis twists Mac’s hand around in both of his, fingers sliding over fingers, over his palm. Remembers what those guys said about Mac’s hands again, surging up at him as Mac closes his hand around Dennis’, holding him still. Such strong hands. He pulls at the hand, tugs it up to his face, presses his lips against his knuckles.
“Bro,” Mac’s voice is a lot lower now, and Dennis knows him, can recognize the arousal. He’s drunk, he tells himself, this doesn’t count as something they need to talk about. “We should go home. You need to sleep.”
Sweet, sweet Mac. Here Dennis was, purring into his hands, and all he cares about is getting Dennis home safely. He fucking loves him, wants to put Mac’s fingers in his mouth.
“No,” he whines instead. “Too far. Wanna stay here, wanna stay here with you.” He’s still got Mac’s hand in a death grip, still pressing soft kisses to his fingers, then up his wrist. Dares to lean forward, peppers a few on the inside of his elbow. Anywhere he can reach. “Come into the office with me.”
“Why?” Mac’s eyes are wide, that reverent expression back. Dennis fucking loves it.
He continues his tour up Mac’s muscular arm, kisses a bicep, a shoulder bone, then nuzzles down onto his collar, then back up to the crook of his neck. “Because,” he breathes between kisses, “I want to fuck you, and I don’t want to do it in front of my sister, unconscious or not.”
Mac’s heart is racing, can feel the pulse beneath his lips. He sits there, unmoving, before his hand is reaching up, resting it tenderly on the side of Dennis’ face. It’s gentle, much too gentle for Dennis’ liking. They’re going to bang in the back office, afterall. He doesn’t want this to be gentle.
“Dennis,” Mac pleads, and then the hand is pushing Dennis off, holding him at arm’s length. “You’re drunk. We can’t do this.”
Irritation floods in. “So what? You’re drunk too. Don’t you want to fuck me, baby boy?”
He can hear a low growl coming from the back of Mac’s throat, and he almost thinks that Mac is going to give in. He goes to lean back into the man’s neck, only to be pushed back again, this time more firmly. “No, Dennis. I’m not that drunk.”
Dennis blinks once, then twice. Is Mac rejecting him? He surveys the man’s face, the blown pupils, the pink flush, his lips twisted down. He’s rejecting him. Dennis feels like he could be sick.
“Oh.” It’s all he’s able to choke out. Mac’s words reverberate in his head, echoing cruelly. I’m not that drunk, says a sharp, cackling Mac. Not drunk enough to have sex with you.
He screws his eyes shut, trying to chase off this phantom version of Mac, one he knows logically doesn’t exist. Mac’s looking out for him. Dennis is wasted, and Mac doesn’t want to take advantage. They’d been to the sexual harassment seminar, he knew that hooking up with people more drunk than you was wrong.
Or.
How many times is he going to keep telling himself that Mac’s in love with him before he realizes the truth that was right in front of him? That Mac didn’t love him, that Mac didn’t even like him. That Mac couldn’t fucking stand him, that he didn’t even want Dennis as a roommate anymore. Didn’t feel any attraction, didn’t feel those butterflies that Dennis felt, just wanted Dennis to leave him alone.
Shame, and something darker, washes through him, flooding through his veins like burning acid. Mac’s hand is still against his face, and he whips out of his grip, nearly stumbling backwards off of his stool, just barely managing to keep his balance. He’s, he’s— he doesn’t even know, can’t name the feeling, can never place the wracking chill that’s coming over him, and he wants to scream, and scream, until his throat is raw and red.
“Den? Are you okay?” It’s Mac’s frantic voice in his ear, and he sounds so worried that it pulls Dennis back to earth, but only for a split second before he’s launched back up into the atmosphere, retreating so deeply inside of himself that nothing can hurt him. This always works. When his emotions start boiling too dangerously for even him to confront, he’ll just. Leave. He’ll still be there, obviously, but it’s like him, with auto-pilot turned on. An alternative Dennis with sharper edges, one who doesn’t concern himself with feelings. It’s still him, it’s not a different personality, he’s not fucking crazy, but it’s the best version of himself, he thinks. This porcelain mask of Dennis might be able to handle this situation.
Dennis opens his eyes, straightens himself up from being slumped over Mac’s shoulder in a desperate embrace. He wipes a tear from his own eye, looks disdainfully at the small wet patch left on Mac’s shirt.
“Okay.” He says, luxuriating in the fact that it comes out smooth, normal. “Let’s go home.”
Mac’s eyebrows are furrowed in that funny little way they get. His eyes are droopy, there are wrinkles lining his face. He’s buff, sure, but who works out that much without being seriously insecure about something? Dennis remembers when he was too skinny, remembers when he was too fat. This version of himself has a catalogue of Mac’s worst moments, a catalogue that he can sort through at his leisure. Thinks about all the times he’s seen Mac look absolutely hideous, thinks about all the times he’s hated Mac so much he could’ve fucking throttled him. Dennis turns his nose up, sneering, and then turns to leave. He’s still too drunk to drive, but they can walk. Mac follows the whole way back, a couple of steps behind, like he always is and deserves to be.
*
He’s not exactly sure when it had first happened, but he knows that it’s happened countless times since he was a child. Maybe a child is a bit of an over exaggeration, because he’s sure that his inner monologue had only started once he reached puberty, once he became old enough to become prideful and self-conscious and propped up by ego and lust. Being a kid had been blissful in comparison, despite their parents being neglectful at best, and straight up abusive at worst.
It had probably started in middle school, and by his sophomore or junior year of high school, his numbness had him in a chokehold, like a mother with her fingers on the scruff of his neck. It wasn’t permanent, it ebbed and it flowed like the tides, though there was no moon cycle he could look to for clarification, no hints as to when he’d be empty, and when the emotion would come flooding back in. Sometimes he would have months of the cold, and he preferred it that way. There was a period of time in his 20’s where he had been cold for almost a year and a half. But it would always come snapping back, sometimes triggered by external forces he could recognize, like when he stared down at his mother’s corpse in her coffin, and sometimes it would be nothing at all in particular. The sound of a car backfiring in the distance, Mac presenting him with a glass of water and advil when he woke up with a hangover. Didn’t matter what it was, it would happen.
It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the first times it had set in for more than a few hours was when he was going through a bit of a rough time when he was 14. It didn’t matter why he was going through a rough time, wasn’t relevant, but he remembered it setting in so vividly. He had been sitting in his bathtub, eyes clenched shut as he tried to ignore the feeling of fingertips on his ribcage (doesn’t matter, can’t touch him now), when all at once, it felt as if he dropped six feet down into his own body. It’s useless trying to explain exactly what it feels like, he’s tried telling Mac, telling Dee, telling his psychiatrist, but the language always fails him. How is he supposed to articulate the feeling of floating, of chaos, of pain and of tears, and then of the drop back into his body? Every time he’s tried to describe it, people go away with the wrong impression, as if he were some helpless wretch locked away inside of his own mind. It wasn’t something he controlled, sure, but it was just as often a kindness as it was a curse. It was the relief of having himself pulled back together, tied into his body as tight as a corset. It was being able to think clearly without being distracted by the cacophony of his irrational thoughts that constantly assaulted his brain.
He was still there, he was still Dennis, and he had the same problems as he did the second before, but only now, thinking didn’t hurt him as much. That night, sitting alone in his bathtub, it had been the only thing that kept him from implosion.
He struggled with it for years before beginning therapy, before being diagnosed for something that felt close, but not quite there. He couldn’t be categorized by a set of symptoms, listed matter-of-factly by a man who didn’t even fucking know him, couldn’t possibly diagnose his years and years and years of turmoil that he’s buried beneath layers of dirt and sand and blood. The talking and the pills did help, but could never truly alleviate his symptoms.
His head had always been a revolving door between the Dennis who feels, and the Dennis who doesn’t. He wouldn’t have survived any other way.
*
When he wakes up the next morning, he’s still cold, emotions still tucked firmly away where they’re not going to bother him. He gets up, showers, shaves, and makes them both kale smoothies before Mac’s even stumbled out of his bedroom to piss. Dennis is devastatingly hungover, temples throbbing, but it’s easy enough to ignore when he’s like this, in complete control of every aspect of his body. The blender is loud as hell, but he takes it, gritting his teeth through it, and he feels all the more accomplished for it as he pours them out equal portions.
Mac joins him soon after, bags blooming spectacularly under his eyes. He looks nervous, guilty, but why should he be? Dennis remembers the rejection, of course, but he’s past it. He’s on an elevated plane of existence. Mac needs to catch up.
Still, the rejection had been objectively painful in the moment, he could admit to himself. It was unacceptable. Who did Dennis think he was, if he couldn’t even manage to get Mac to sleep with him? He couldn’t stand for it, and he’d devised a plan in the early hours of the morning, when the sharp pain of the hangover had forced him up hours before he’d like to be. Could never sleep the morning after getting that drunk, and so he’d used his restlessness as an excuse to mull things over. Dennis had been weak in the weeks prior, allowing his feelings to get in the way of things. Once he’d been able to track down definitively why he’d allowed himself to change—his regrettable attraction to Mac, and Mac’s new body— he’d been able to come up with his master plan. It mainly just involved becoming so irresistible to Mac that he’d forget every single other person on the planet, they’d have sex, and then maybe Dennis would be able to sleep again. A dull thought occurs to him, as he sits at the kitchen table, sipping at his smoothie, that this had kind of been his whole plan all along, before he’d gone to therapy and been convinced he was in love with Mac. Yet another reason to not go to his next session. He makes a mental note to cancel when he gets the chance.
Dennis smiles across the table at Mac, who is drinking his own smoothie in silence, too discombobulated to even look at his phone. Even the use of these smoothies was a calculated manipulation. Mac always nagged at him about his calories, how he should be eating and drinking more, and would be pleased to see Dennis take the initiative himself. Mac was also always the one who insisted on preparing their meals for them, and taking his role away would throw him off his natural rhythm. And Dennis wanted him staggering, figuratively speaking.
“About last night,” Dennis begins, smoothing a wrinkle out of his sleeve. Mac looks up, surprised to hear Dennis bring it up. “I wanted to apologize for how I acted.”
“Huh?” Mac grunts, and Dennis has to physically stop himself from rolling his eyes at the man. He could be so fucking stupid sometimes. “You don’t need to—”
Dennis interrupts him before he can finish. “Yes, I do. I acted foolishly, and you made your feelings clear.” He smiles, and he knows it’s not a particularly nice one, but he also knows that he looks handsome, golden. “It won’t happen again.”
Mac doesn’t respond, just mulls it over in his head, and Dennis doesn’t stay to find out if he has anything else to say, anyways. He stands, striding out into the living room, half-full smoothie grasped firmly in hand. He can feel Mac’s eyes following him, and that was exactly the fucking point. They have a few hours until they have to be at the bar again, if the rest of the gang even want them to come in at all. They don’t pass out at the bar nearly as much as they used to when they were younger, and when they do, they usually just keep the bar closed the next day.
The next part of his plan mainly involves carefully arranged blitz attacks. It much more proactive. Dennis knows himself, knows that the clarity with which he’s thinking won’t last forever. Sooner or later, the emotions will creep back in, like they always do, and Dennis has to make the most of it until that happens. This time, when Mac’s groupies come into the bar, Dennis insists on them sitting up at the bar with him, bribing them with promises of free shots and smiling prettily. It works magnificently, because the first time he does this, he’s just coerced Charlie into jumping into a dumpster by saying he saw an unopened package at the bottom, beneath the layers of trash bags weeping unidentifiable fluids. Charlie, hearing this, rushes to tell Mac, who also can’t resist the lure of an unopened package, and assumably joins him in the dumpster. When they return to the bar, they’re both disgusting and more than a little disappointed. When Mac approaches Dennis at the bar to ask about the package, there’s a figurative stink cloud wafting off of him, and the twinks visibly cringe. Dennis just shrugs, says something about how a bum must have already taken it, and turns back to the other men. Mac lingers for a minute, forgotten in the background as they freeze him out before he retreats to the bathroom to wash himself off.
The twinks are eating out of his hands by the end of the night. Dennis is just flirty enough to encourage them, but not flirty enough to suggest that he’s actually going to take any of them up on their offers. But the next time they come in, a few days later, they head straight to the bar, sparing only a passing glance at Mac.
He also makes sure to sprinkle in more quality Mac and Dennis moments. They’re not real moments, not really, because Dennis is planning them all, but they’ll be all the same to Mac. Nothing too drastic, nothing obvious, but simple things. He’ll get up for coffee wearing only his boxers, making Mac watch the slight swing of his hips when it’s too early for the other man to prepare himself for their unique brand of warfare. He’ll fetch drinks for Mac, ranging from picking him up Starbucks, to grabbing him a beer when he can see he’s almost empty. He’ll move just a little too close to Mac, draping his legs across him on the couch when they’re watching TV, nudging up against him when they’re at the bar. He even devises a quick scheme for the gang that begins with them trying to scam a bank manager into investing in the bar, and ends with Mac and Dennis getting “accidentally” trapped in a broom closet in that same bank for several hours. It’s fine, no one gets arrested, and Charlie actually ends up convincing one of the tellers into coming in for an investors meeting that ultimately culminates to nothing, but Dennis knows that Mac has a good time with him in the confined space. They just talk, eventually ending up sitting on the floor, practically squashed together with the lack of space. Dennis pulls out his phone and they play Sudoku, Mac offering unhelpful suggestions, and it feels like they’re two normal people.
His next plan of attack is to insert himself into Mac’s dates. Mac brings another guy to the bar, and Dennis is there in an instant, alternating between being just charming enough that he might be flirting with his date, and draping possessive hands over Mac’s broad shoulders. The touches are particularly obvious, he thinks, but that’s exactly the point. He wants these men to know that Mac is his, will always be his, and that this ownership is something that he’ll fight for. Plus, most guys don’t like these kinds of games in their casual relationships. Mac still manages to close sometimes, but every time he sees one of the men excuse himself and sneak out when Mac wasn’t looking, it fills him with grim satisfaction.
He escalates soon after, invites Mac into the living room one evening, laptop open on the coffee table. The screen isn’t showing anything but the Google homepage, but Mac understands the implication immediately.
“I don’t know,” he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and Dennis knows he’s about to say yes. He hasn’t gotten laid in a little while, thanks to Dennis’ interference.
“C’mon,” Dennis is already sitting down on the couch, pulling the laptop onto his lap. “We haven’t done this in forever.” He goes for his most casual tone of voice, but when he glances back at Mac, still standing behind him, he makes sure his smile is filthy.
“Yeah, for a reason. Don’t really think we want to watch the same videos anymore.” It’s half incorrect, the truth of the matter sitting heavy in the air between them. But Mac is moving, sets himself down on the edge of the couch beside him.
Dennis inhales a breath, holding back a smile. His first trap is set, and he glances at the clock. Late, but not late enough that they’d be too tired. “Don’t worry,” he breathes, typing in an address. “I already thought about that.”
He’d done extensive research on what video he was going to play for Mac. Gay porn came immediately to mind, but he didn’t want to be too obvious about it, or it wouldn’t be any fun. He’d scoured the web for hours until he finally found this video. It was a threesome, and it had a chick with big tits in it, so they could keep their veil of hazy plausible deniability, but more importantly, the two men looked remarkably like Mac and Dennis. Porn Mac was big, beefy and dark-haired. Porn Dennis was more slender than real Dennis, more a twink than— whatever Dennis was, but he had the same jawline, and almost the same colour eyes.
It also helped that the girl was barely involved in the threesome, mainly there as a cheerleader who bounced pleasantly in the background as the men went to town on each other. It was sure to drive Mac insane.
Mac settles in beside him, leaving a good foot of space in between them. Dennis stares at the gap for a half second before pressing play on the laptop and setting it back down on the table so Mac can better see it. He doesn’t know what Mac’s playing at, not really. The dating around, for one. He had known objectively that Mac was dating, knew it before he even went away to North Dakota, but really, it was getting excessive. And it ramping up (he was sure it was ramping up it couldn’t be just his imagination) just after Dennis sucks his dick? Suspicious, to say the least. The past few weeks had been so strange, so off-putting. Dennis was adjusting, was recalibrating himself with their peculiar state of talking/not talking. He doesn’t know if Mac had already shifted gears, or if he was still struggling to catch up. Dennis just doesn’t know, but he intends to find out.
He doesn’t watch the porn, not really, just enough to hear it playing in the background. He’s always appreciated the stories in porn, liked the theatrics even if they were just waiting a polite amount of time to pound it out. In this one, the beefcake is dating the chick with big tits, and the Dennis character is trying to seduce them both. Once the girl gives into it, she convinces the beefcake, and then she is effectively forgotten, unnecessary. The beefcake gathers the twink up in his arms, carrying him across the room to a bed, and throws him unceremoniously onto it. The twink moans, which Dennis thinks is a strange reaction to being tossed as if he were a ragdoll, knows that he himself requires more gentle handling.
Dennis watches Mac instead. He’s subtle, of course, but he watches the other man greedily as the action of the porn intensifies. The beefcake already has a couple of fingers inside the twink’s asshole, making the smaller man twist and writhe in the sheets without any hint of shame. Dennis blew his load to this the night before, so he knows what is going to happen, but he’s only human. He can feel his heart rate start to climb, his cock beginning to come to attention.
Mac is worse beside him. He had looked a bit suspicious when he’d sat down, but all hints of doubt dropped off his face as he stares, slack-jawed at the screen. He’s palming himself with his left hand, not dominant, so Dennis knows he’s using the hand furthest away from himself. He represses the urge to smile, to laugh at him, to lean over and coo in his ear, “touch yourself, baby. Touch yourself for me.”
Dennis sets off his next trap as soon as the porn versions of themselves begin fucking in earnest, beefcake taking twink from behind as the woman fingers herself in the background. Dennis unbuttons his pants, pushing them down just far enough that he can pull his dick out. The blood has rushed in, has made him fully erect, and he knows that Mac can see it. He begins stroking himself, eyes glued to the men on screen, biting his bottom lip wantonly. He doesn’t dare glance over, not yet, lets a few more minutes slip by. He can hear Mac remove his own cock, can hear the telltale sounds of the man jerking himself off, and he waits until the beefcake on screen flips the two of them around, so they’re fucking with the twink on his back with his legs in the air. As soon as they’ve rearranged themselves, Dennis lets out a soft sigh, a hot little breath as he changes the speed of his hand, slowing down to tug at himself in a way that feels like he’s showing off. He wiggles his hips, sinking down the couch and planting his feet firmly on the floor beneath him. Tilts his head back, and closes his eyes and breathes out another sigh, slightly louder now. This is the final trap. Bait is set. If Mac doesn’t take it, it’ll just seem like he got a bit too into the porn on screen.
Doesn’t have to worry about it, in the end. He licks at his lips, feeling dry from biting down, opening his eyes as he does so and looking over. Mac is staring directly at him, at the line of his jaw, perfectly displayed. He’s jerking himself off with an intense fervor, and his dick looks so hard it’d be painful. When Mac glances up, flickering over his lips, his eyes, Dennis makes sure he looks right back. Twists his lips upwards into a knowing smile.
He doesn’t have to do anything else. Mac is on him, and it’s so sudden and when Dennis tries to gasp out in surprise he can’t because his lips are being smothered by Mac’s. It’s only seconds later that his brain kicks back into gear, and he’s kissing back, accommodating Mac’s tongue which has dived into his mouth in the meantime. They part for half a breath as Mac pulls his shirt over his head, then again when they pull Dennis out of his own. The porn still plays in the background, though significantly harder to hear over the sounds of their own heavy breathing.
Dennis is not going to waste this opportunity. He’s been thinking about this, dreaming about this for weeks, what he’d do once he got Mac into this situation again, and he’s come prepared. There’s a bottle of lube hidden between the couch cushions, a condom that he slipped under the laptop when he had set it down earlier. The condom he’d deliberated over at first, before ultimately decided it was for the best. Mac was out there banging a lot of strange men, after all. Maybe another time.
More than the hidden condom and lube, Dennis was ready. He’d fingered himself earlier in the shower, thinking about Mac but also thinking about how great his victory over the man would be, when he finally got him to fuck him. He’d fingered himself until he’d seen stars, knees shaking as he struggled to remain upright. Hadn’t come, had turned off the water and stood in the cold shower until his erection eventually subsided. Knew it would be better if he just waited. He was stretched, and he had made sure he was clean everywhere, and he was ready to collect. Mac was going to fuck him.
“Yeah,” Dennis moans, still a bit unsure as to whether it’d snap Mac out of it, but knowing that the only way he wasn’t going to talk was if he bit his lip until it bled. “Fuck, Mac. Touch me.”
Mac obeys, hands already roaming their way down his body, tugging lightly at his pants. It fills Dennis with satisfaction, loves knowing how much Mac wants him, wants him naked. He can feel the man’s hips, twitching against him in tiny thrusts. Dennis shifts, pushing his pants and boxers down in the same movement that he wraps his legs around Mac’s waist.
“C’mon, baby boy. C’mon. Clothes, off. Want to feel you.”
Again, Mac obeys, pauses his humping to get himself fully undressed. Dennis groans, can’t stop himself as he feels Mac’s naked cock slide against his own, and the heat and the texture just feel so, so, so good. Mac moans against his mouth, and he swallows it greedily, arms grasping at Mac’s shoulders and pulling him in as tightly as he can.
The remaining logical part of Dennis cuts through the fog of lust that has coated his brain, reminding him to move this forward, to make sure that Mac didn’t come until he was fully inside of him. So much work, so much preparation, and Mac was going to come from rutting himself in the crease of Dennis’ thigh. Unacceptable.
“Mac, baby.” He cooes, and he sounds breathy, and desperate, and it’s how he wants to sound right now. “Mac, please. Want you to fuck me.”
Mac’s hips stutter, but he thankfully doesn’t come, but he’s pulling back from where he had buried his face in Dennis’ neck, surveys Dennis carefully for any hint of irony or hesitation. He’ll find none there, because Dennis doesn’t think he’s ever wanted a cock up his ass more, has never wanted someone’s dick more than he wanted Mac’s.
“Yeah,” Mac gasps out, his ocular assessment done and Dennis has passed the test. “Yeah, fuck, I need—“
Dennis pulls the bottle of lube out from its hiding place, shoving it into Mac’s hands impatiently. “Condom is on the table, under the laptop.”
Mac glances to the table, and it’s as if he’s suddenly remembered where they are, that they’re in their living room. On the laptop screen, the angle of the camera has changed to a close up of balls slapping against skin, reminiscent of Dennis’ sex tapes. Mac tilts the laptop up, picks up the condom. He looks at it consideringly, then to the bottle of lube, then finally back to Dennis. “You planned this?”
It’s phrased as a question, but it’s not one. Dennis doesn’t warrant it with a response beyond curling his lips up into a sly smile.
“You planned this,” Mac repeats, but he’s set the condom down on the couch beside Dennis’ hips and he’s uncapping the bottle of lube. He slicks up his fingers, just two of them, which Dennis notes curiously. He’s interested in Mac’s process, in finding out exactly how experienced the man is when it comes to sex. “Thought you didn’t want—”
Dennis scoffs, interrupting him for the second time in 2 minutes. “Of course I wanted this. How could you not notice?”
Mac is starting to smile, still looking down at his own fingers. There’s something soft about his expression. “You’re hard to read.”
Mac is talking far too much for Dennis’ liking. He racks his brain, trying to come up with the best plan of action for having this process a bit more streamlined, because Mac is still talking even as Dennis openly ignores him. He considers; should he act bored? Should he get more desperate? Should he be aggressive? He knows Mac, but he doesn’t know him this intimately. What character should Dennis be playing right now?
He doesn’t deliberate very long, as the second Mac starts trailing his hand down the curve of his ass, Dennis’ hips twist and wiggle with impatience at their own accord. He maneuvers Mac’s fingers closer, spreading his legs open to best accommodate him. Mac is still talking, and is looking incredibly smug, but Dennis doesn’t care.
“Mac,” Dennis gasps out, as the other man teases him, leaning over him and probably saying something degrading about how obviously desperate Dennis is, his finger circling his rim but not pressing any further. “I don’t fucking care. Just do it.”
A peel of laughter escapes Mac. “Just do what?” Still teasing him.
Dennis throws his hands in the air in exasperation. Mac is toying with him, but at this point he’s too far gone to turn back now. If Mac wants him to admit it, he’ll admit it, as long as it gets him from point A to point B faster. “Finger me, dude.”
He’s rewarded for his honesty with a finger slipping inside, slowly, carefully, but with the experience of someone who has clearly fingered someone before. Dennis clenches his eyes shut, grabbing at his own knees so he can hold himself open. Mac’s finger is so thick. Dennis is stretched, so he’s not in pain or anything; it’s just a stark reminder that Mac does indeed have thick, wonderful, clever fingers that is sending the blood down to his erection.
Mac probes him, smoothly slipping in another finger. “Honestly, thought you’d be tighter, dude.”
Dennis frowns, opening his eyes to look down at the other man. “Are you saying I’m loose? That’s incredibly insulting, Mac.”
“No, no, not what I meant!” Mac leans down, kisses a trail down his thigh. He licks a light stripe up the side of Dennis’ neglected dick, quick enough that Dennis is keening up for more. “Just was thinking, you planned everything else so you might’ve…?”
“I might’ve planned that too?” Dennis is starting to find it hard to concentrate on keeping up with this conversation, as Mac spreads his two fingers inside of him, scissoring him open. He closes his eyes again. “I did. I fingered myself in the shower. Was thinking of you.”
“You think about me when you finger yourself?”
“All the time, baby boy.” Mac is moving below him, withdrawing his fingers slowly. Can hear the crinkling of the condom wrapper, the sound of the lube uncapping again. Dennis doesn’t dare open his eyes, still holding his legs open for Mac, shifting his hips to deal with the dull feeling of emptiness. “Think about how good you’d be, how good I’d be for you.”
He hears Mac groan, and then Mac’s hands are back on him, thumbs resting on the soft skin on the back of his knees, pushing Dennis open wide. “You’d be good for me?”
Dennis is desperate, feels the slick tip of Mac’s cock bumping up against him as Mac positions himself on top of him. Dennis lets go of his legs, blindly feels for Mac’s shoulders, squeezing his biceps. So strong. Barely knows what he’s saying. “Yeah, I’ll be so good for you, baby, I’ll be so—”
Dennis gasps, sucking air in greedily through his lungs, his eyes flying open as Mac finally— finally! — starts pressing his dick inside of him. He’s so thick and it feels so overwhelming, like Mac’s cock is making him forget exactly who he is. The stretch isn’t exactly pleasant, never is, but as soon as Mac is bottoming out, Dennis is scrambling forward, grabbing at Mac’s arms to tug him in closer so Mac’s draped over his body. Mac stops moving, allowing Dennis time to get adjusted to his friend’s dick up in his guts, and the second it stops hurting Dennis thinks he might lose his mind. The feeling of fullness mixed with the sensation of Mac’s weight on top of him is dizzying, and he thinks that if he had any actual stimulation on his dick beyond being squeezed between their torsos, he’d bust right then and there.
“Den, you okay?” Mac’s voice is in his ear, and he sounds concerned, but he also sounds like he can’t wait to move. Dennis just nods his head, voice completely gone, head almost blank as his brain attempts to think of anything except the blooming of pleasure rising up in him from his core. As Mac begins moving, sliding himself out just to snap back in again— encouraging a small gasp from Dennis’ lips— Dennis is suddenly overwhelmed with just how right this all is. It’s sex, and it feels good, because of course it does, but it also feels good because it’s Mac, and because he loves Mac.
Loves Mac? The one brain cell in Dennis’ head that is still functioning asks him. He’s wary. He’s been here before.
Mac pulls out and thrusts back in again, and the strength of it is enough to send Dennis howling, enough that his vision temporarily whites out. Mac is nuzzling into his neck, sloppily pressing kisses to his pulse point. Dennis wraps his arms around Mac’s neck, tangling his fingers in between his hair and stroking as if he were comforting him.
Yeah, you love him.
It can’t be his voice in his head, because he’s never been in love, so how could his voice know? But the thought flutters and drifts inside of him, transforming, until it’s like a million tiny butterflies flying from one rosebud to another, you love him, you love him, you’ve always loved him. They kiss at the synapses in his brain, every nerve of his body rising up to meet them, because he’s been shoving this down for so long he’d forgotten about it entirely. And suddenly, in the time it takes for Dennis to heave in a desperate, gasping breath, he’s alive again.
Warmth rushes in, and he can tell that with it, all the badness does too. But also affection, and happiness, and sickly sweet sensation he feels whenever he’s reminded of how much Mac means to him. It’s heat, it’s awareness. Dennis’ chest threatens to cave in on itself.
It’s stupid, he thinks, so stupid to be reacting so viscerally to sex, something he’s done with countless people and something he’s never considered to be a particularily meaningful act in and of itself. The thought is cold in his bones, the remaining dredges that never completely leave. Do other people feel this way during sex? Do other people feel as if their world is falling from beneath their feet, crumbling into dust as he floats up into the heavens, burning and shining bright? He’s about to cry. God, he doesn’t think he can handle the embarrassment of being the guy who cries during sex. Another thought rises out of the pool of warmth in his gut, be kinder to yourself.
Mac shifts their positions, mirroring the porn but in reverse. He pulls out of Dennis entirely, flips him onto his stomach, tugs at his hips to get him on his hands and knees, then plunges back in. A noise escapes from Dennis’ throat that he doesn’t quite know how to categorize, more a squeak than a moan. His head is spinning from the sudden change of positioning, struggling to catch up with the physical when his consciousness is still switching from cold to hot. He realizes that he was completely compliant, putty in Mac’s bossy hands. It feels good.
Dennis sinks down, if only to prove that he could act independently, his face pressed into crossed arms, ass in the air as Mac pounds down into him. He wants to show that he still has some semblance of control over the situation. It has somewhat of an opposite effect, as the new angle allows Mac access to his prostate, sending Dennis into another flurry of brainlessness. He can hear throaty little moans coming from somewhere, takes a minute to realize that it’s him making those noises.
“Fuck, Den. You’re so, this is so.” Mac doesn’t finish his sentence, but Dennis understands. Of course he understands. He claws a hand behind him blindly, searching for something to grab onto, and finds one of Mac’s hands pressed tight against his hips. It’s quite a test of Dennis’ abilities, because he’s pretty sure that he can’t feel Mac’s grip on his hips, can’t feel the fingers press bruises into his soft flesh. Dennis pulls at his hand, making Mac change positions again, pulling him flush against his back. Twists, presses Mac’s hand against his throat, lets go, hopes Mac gets the hint.
He does, fingers squeezing and Dennis loses his mind. He scrambles his hand down, grabs at his own dick, tight and painful against his stomach. Mac doesn’t squeeze hard, but when he tightens his grip at a particularly nasty thrust against Dennis’ prostate, Dennis comes with a spluttering cry, Mac’s name on his lips.
Mac comes soon after, while Dennis is still reeling through the aftershocks, thrusts becoming erratic before he fucks in as deep as he can get and releases. Dennis is aware enough to clench tight as he feels his hips start to flutter, moaning something out about Mac please and Mac baby and he knows that it’ll help if Mac is even coherent enough to hear it. He seems to come forever, dick twitching inside of him, and Dennis sadly considers the condom barrier between the two of them. Dennis is going to make sure that they both get tested the next fucking day, so he can feel Mac coming inside of him, can feel it dripping out of him, down his legs.
Mac’s weight drops down on him suddenly, crashing down on top of him and Dennis immediately collapses under the strain. He can feel his own come coating his hand, wiping up against the couch, and he sourly notes that they’ll have to clean that up later. Mac is heavy, which is something that Dennis knows, is very into in a sexy way. It’s not so great when he’s being crushed beneath him as Mac slowly navigates his way through his post-coital daze.
“Mac,” Dennis is able to grunt out, face crushed against a cushion. “Get off of me.”
Mac doesn’t move for a minute, still very clearly living in his bliss, and then he’s off of Dennis all at once. Dennis hisses as Mac’s flaccid cock slides out of him, but he’s able to breathe again and that has to count for something. He creaks his neck to the side, still far too lazy to actually move, despite the growing discomfort of his messy belly. Mac is a few steps away, taking care of the condom. He comes back with a clean dishrag, gently places it in front of Dennis. He’s hovering, a worried expression on his face.
“Sorry,” he says, looking embarrassed. “I, I’ll go if you want me to.”
It occurs to Dennis that this is uncharted territory for them. He’d been so wrapped up in the trivialities of getting Mac into bed with him, he hadn’t spared much of a thought to how they would handle the aftermath. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Dennis hadn’t really cared at the time, wrapped up in 20 layers of chill. But now he was here, and somehow it seemed that Mac had fucked him hard enough to knock some emotions loose inside of him (to over-simplify things). Sure, love and other such garbage, but also all of the insecurity that his iciness had masked. It’s as if he’s only now remembering the strangeness of these last few weeks, forgetting that they aren’t actually together. Probably shouldn’t have immediately snapped at Mac to get off him.
Dennis turns over on the couch, picking up the rag and idly wiping at his stomach. Wants it to look idle, anyways, but he can’t mask the way his hands have started shaking. He doesn’t think it’s overly noticeable, but this is Mac he’s dealing with. He probably notices. He opens his mouth once, then twice, but he doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t know what to say.
Mac turns away from him, retreating into the darkness of his bedroom. The laptop has long since finished playing the porn, pop-ups on either side of the video player about hot singles in their area. Dennis looks at it, because he doesn’t know what else to look at. He’s still sprawled naked across the couch, and a bubbling concoction of guilt and shame boil up inside him, threatening to spill out of his throat and down his chest.
Dennis hears the door shut behind Mac, and just as quickly, he hears Mac burst back out into the living room. Dennis looks up at him, a little shocked. The man looks angry, he thinks, and he looks good when he’s angry. All vengeful, and shit. Mac just fucked him senseless, and he’s already thinking about how much he’d like to do it again. Not now, obviously. Dennis is in his 40’s.
“Actually, no, dude. I’m not just gonna leave. What the hell was that?” Mac is definitely angry. Dennis throws his legs over the side of the couch, sitting up to listen. Winces a bit in discomfort.
“What was what?” Dennis knows he sounds like an asshole, like he’s being purposefully obtuse, but he’s genuinely struggling here. He’s never done this, never had this kind of awkward conversation after sex. He talked to the people he fucked, usually to negotiate their way out of his apartment, or his way out of theirs, but it wasn’t like this. He hopes that Mac can hear the unspoken plea for assistance in his words.
Mac coughs a laugh, a funny, high-pitched one, which Dennis definitely takes as Mac not picking up on his uncertainty. “What was-? What was what? Dennis!” Mac takes a couple of steps forward, advancing. He’s pissed, so pissed. Dennis is so attracted to him, he wants to cry, throw himself into Mac’s space, then cry some more. “Den. I just fucked you. What was it, two weeks ago you said we’d never happen, and today you just begged me to fuck you.”
He had him there. Dennis definitely said please somewhere along the way. Please constitutes as begging, especially when paired with “please, want you to fuck me.”
Dennis clears his throat. “I—.” He had nothing. Absolutely goddamn nothing. His brain is working overtime now, too, he’s berating himself internally for being so fucking cowardly, but he has nothing to say to Mac at that moment. He blinks, rapidly, and he swallows down the sudden realization that he’s hurtling straight into a panic attack. Hadn’t expected that. “I, Mac. I—”
Mac seems to realize it in the same breath that Dennis does, because Dennis can see the fight slowly drain from the other man’s face. His fists, clenched at his side, slowly loosen, and he’s lowering himself to the floor, on his knees at eye level with Dennis. “Hey,” he says gently, though he still seems a touch resentful. “It’s okay, man.”
Dennis’ eyes fill with tears in earnest now. It’s okay? How is it okay? The panic slams into him with full force, the bubbling guilt and shame coming with it. Mac was so good. He was so fucking good to him. Dennis had toyed with him for literal decades now, had tugged him along like a toy, tossing him to the side when he was finished. Even tonight had been a manipulation, planned precisely, and Mac knew it, knew that Dennis had planned it. Especially since Dennis had come back from North Dakota, after abandoning his toddler son, he’d been constantly pushing Mac away one minute, then pulling back in the next. And he could still put aside his anger to comfort Dennis just because he knew that he needed it? When he probably still thinks Dennis was just using him to get off?
Dennis didn’t deserve to have Mac, didn’t even deserve to have him as a friend. Huge, aching sobs rack through his body, sobs that he tries with all his strength to shove back down inside with little success. It’s exceedingly painful; not only the panic itself, but the force he had to exert to avoid tipping over the edge, to avoid blacking out or throwing up or dying right there on the spot. He can feel Mac’s movement around him, can feel the man placing a soft throw blanket over his shoulders, hiding him away from the big, wide world. Dennis fucking hates himself, the thought thrashes wildly through the chambers of his heart, Dennis fucking hates himself and loves Mac.
Then, quietly, through the dull rushing of time and space banging his eardrums— It’s okay. It’s okay. Just breathe. In and out. In and out. In and out. It’s Mac’s voice, and Dennis latches on eagerly, because it makes sense, the logic of the advice and the soothing tone of Mac’s voice is cool bliss on his overheated amygdala.
Slowly, the world returns to him. Nothing came crashing down. He’s sitting on the couch in their living room, clutching a blanket tightly against his body, as if it were a second skin. Mac is still kneeling in front of him, downturned brown eyes so big and bright and worried. He falls forward, lets Mac catch him as he sighs into his neck, breath light across his jugular. He’s exhausted.
“C’mon.” Mac’s voice reverberates pleasantly through his chest. “Let’s get you to bed.” Dennis, putty in his hands, allows himself to be scooped, then carried bridal style into his own bedroom. Mac lays him down, gentle hands lingering to brush softly on skin, or maybe that’s Dennis’ hands smoothing against Mac.
“Stay,” the words slip out, because Dennis hadn’t tried very hard to stop them. “Please.”
A pause. Then, “okay.” The feeling of a warm body, slipping into the bed beside him, pulling the covers up over them both. The last thing he remembers before drifting off to sleep is the feeling of Mac, tugging him in flush against him. Feels like heaven, wishes he deserved it.
*
Dennis doesn’t stay sleeping for very long. It’s still dark when he comes back to awareness, feeling sleepy and disoriented, and very confused about why he was even awake in the first place.
Mac’s hands are still around him. His one arm must be completely asleep by now. Memories of the night before creep back in on him slowly, a growing sense of embarrassment creeping in with them. The sex, great. Had really enjoyed that. What he didn’t enjoy was turning into a complete mess the second Mac pushed him for answers that he really did deserve. They couldn’t keep this up, the constant cycle that Dennis was too comfortable to stop, and Mac was too kind to. Especially now. Things had to change. They couldn’t put this on the back burner any longer. Dennis doesn’t even think that he wants to.
There’s a fresh wave of embarrassment when he thinks about the night at the bar, when Mac had rejected him, and he’d lost his shit over it. Why had that happened in the first place? Because he thought Mac didn’t want him? Laying there, safe in Mac’s strong arms, the thought is almost unfathomable. How could he have doubted Mac’s love, Mac’s devotion, when he knew it as the only certainty in his life. Mac loved him. He loved Mac.
It takes him a minute to realize that Mac’s hand is slowly stroking down his arm, touching so lightly that Dennis hadn’t even noticed it. Supposes it means that Mac is also awake, is also thinking too hard about what had happened. He’d probably notice that Dennis wasn’t sleeping, if he didn’t already know. He had to say something. If he didn’t—
Mac would leave. He knew, he knew with certainty. Mac would eventually leave, would grow tired of the uncertainty and Dennis would deserve it.
Dennis cleared his throat, gummy with sleep. “Hi.”
The hand tracing patterns down his arm stops, then starts again. “Hi.” He doesn’t sound mad. Just sounds tired.
He still doesn’t really know how to say what he wanted to say, but that doesn’t really matter. The silence is looming, has been looming for weeks and months and years now. Steeling himself, he’s barely able to mumble out a soft, pathetic, “sorry.” Can’t remember the last time he apologized to him.
Mac doesn’t answer. He breathes so heavy, Dennis thinks, doesn’t know how he hadn’t been annoyed by that before. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t know why it doesn’t bother him now. “It’s okay.” He eventually says, after a long moment.
“No, it’s not.” Dennis closes his eyes, though he’s now more awake than ever. “I, you’re, we’re.” Wills the tears not to start welling up again, frustrated with his inability to string together even one coherent sentence. Sighs, tries to breathe out as much of the gunk clogging his system as he can. “It’s not okay.”
Mac takes another minute to respond. “No,” he finally agrees. “No, it’s not.”
Mac’s still holding him close, despite everything, their bodies still pressed against the other, their nakedness impossible to ignore. The other man feels so good against him, his brawn and his warmth and the smooth planes of skin. He’s still tracing shapes into his arm, and Dennis thinks that he might even be able to recognize some of them. A circle, a cloud, a heart…
“What’s going on with you, Den?”
There’s something in the tone of Mac’s voice that tears Dennis to pieces. He sounds so vulnerable, so open, and Dennis wants to reassure him, wants to comfort him until he sounds confident and brash again.
“I. I don’t know, Mac.”
“You have to give me something here, man. I can’t keep doing this if you don’t at least talk to me.”
“What do you think?” Dennis asks, the question flying off his lips, but he’s genuinely curious. If he’s going to make this up to him (how, Dennis hasn’t quite figured out), he needs to know what he’s working against. He opens his eyes again, peering over at the other man.
Mac is staring up at the ceiling, handsome face only slightly illuminated by the light pollution streaming through Dennis’ window. “What do I think?” He repeats Dennis’ words, as he’s so prone to do, seeming to weigh them over in his head. “Honestly? I can’t tell with you anymore. I’ve been trying to give you space, since the shitty bar thing, and I keep trying to date other people, and move on and shit. But then you’re there, and it feels like you’re flirting with me, and it feels like you’re jealous of the dudes I’m banging, but I don’t know. Sometimes it feels like you hate me, and I’m not worth shit, but then other times you’re telling me you finger yourself thinking about me and begging me to fuck you. Just, a lot of mixed messages. I just wanna know what you want.”
It’s so honest, it’s breathtaking. Dennis had always been a bit envious of how easy it was for Mac to be so open. But instead of making him angry, it just made something inside of him soften. He was still afraid, still terrified of revealing himself fully to someone else, but. But. This was Mac. Mac makes him want to be brave.
“I’m sorry,” Dennis repeats, and his voice sounds clear, strong. “For making you think I hate you. I don’t, could never hate you. You’re so…” Honest? Kind? Courageous? Fearless? Beautiful? Tender? Lovely? Those cut Dennis too deep. He couldn’t verbalize those. “Good.”
“I’m good?” Mac turns his head, looks over to meet Dennis’ eyes. Despite everything, there’s that softness.
Dennis nods. “Yeah. The best. You’re, you’re, uh.” He takes a deep breath. “You mean so much to me, Mac. Really. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“You’d be fine.”
“No, I really wouldn’t.” He sits up, slightly, leaning over so he’s looking directly at Mac now. Needs to get this out before it shrivels up in his throat. “You always make sure I’m eating, that I’m taking my pills. You wake me up in the mornings when I sleep in too late, and you help me when I’m having one of my, you know.” He waves a hand dismissively, in a gesture he hopes Mac understands. “I’d probably be dead without you, Mac. I’m serious—”
“Oh, Dennis, you’re over-exaggerating—”
“You’re the best person in my life, the person who I care about the most—”
“I care about you too—”
“Mac, stop fucking interupting me, I’m trying to say something here—”
“You don’t have a monopoly on emotional speeches, dude—”
“I just need you to know!” Deep breath. “That I came back from North Dakota and you were ripped and hot, and you being ripped and hot made me realize that I might have been avoiding certain things between us. Things that you weren’t avoiding anymore, and that I needed to catch up on.”
Mac is smiling at him now. “Are you trying to say that you think I’m hot?”
Dennis throws his hands in the air, frustrated. “You know you’re hot, asshole. I’m trying to say that you’re hot, that I’m very attracted to you, and that I love you.”
(Dennis thinks about a nature documentary he’d watched one morning, glued to the television with a hangover. It wasn’t his usual style, generally only liked the nature documentaries where you could see the animals hunt and kill their prey, but he was too hungover to even consider changing the channel. It was about global warming, about how they’re all going to die. He’d heard it all before, and ultimately, he didn’t care (no matter how much shit he’d give Mac). He was going to die anyways, what did it matter if the rest of humanity died along with him?
One scene, however, had stuck with him, where they were flying above the polar ice caps, displaying the vast glaciers floating prettily by. They were splendid, majestic, even. And he watched as the ice shifted in response to something he hadn’t seen, a great crack spreading lightning fast across. It only took seconds before half of the glacier was crashing into the sea. The imagery was, of course, shocking, but what stayed with Dennis long after he turned off the documentary, was the sound of it cracking. It was cacophonous; he had found it impossible to fully describe to Mac and Dee and Charlie the next day at the bar. The thunderous boom of destruction had rocked him, sitting horrified on the couch, and he knew that if he had been physically present for it happening, it would have been loud enough to send him hurtling through the clouds.
As Dennis’ words slip from his lips, I love you, he can almost hear the sound of the glacier cracking, separating from the ice and falling into the sea. He can almost feel the chill, feel the goosebumps working their way up his spine, cold water constricting all the air in his lungs. His limbs are locked; all he can do is wait to see what happens.
But it’s Mac. Mac, who loved him, who would follow him anywhere. If Dennis was tumbling headfirst into the icy water, Mac would dive in after him. Probably wouldn’t save him, but at least they’d be down there together.)
Dennis doesn’t think he’s ever seen Mac look at him like this before. Or at least at this close of a distance from him. Sometimes, when Mac doesn’t think that he’s looking, he’ll see the other man out of the corner of his eye and that’s exactly what this look is. His smile, thin-lipped and turned upward, droopy eyes impossibly fond. He slides his arm up Dennis’ side to place a soft hand on his face, thumb rubbing cheekbone. “I love you too, Den.”
It’s a relief that he hadn’t known he needed. Dennis preens into it, fully snuggling into the hand on his face, loves the way that it sounds coming from Mac’s lips. He sounds confident; as if they were words they’d say to each other all the time, like it should be obvious but he doesn’t mind saying it a few more times. His heart is practically fluttering in his chest, doesn’t think an arrhythmia is the best thing for his health. “Oh,” he says after a minute, only realizing that it’s probably his turn to speak when Mac starts chuckling under his breath. Probably laughing at him, but Dennis is prepared to ignore that slight. “Well. That’s good then. We love each other?” He doesn’t sound nearly as confident, the words themselves clumsy on his tongue.
Mac doesn’t seem to mind. “We love each other.” Practically giggles like a schoolgirl.
They both eventually fall back asleep without much talking, because it just feels so warm and safe holding each other in their arms. It’s so much more domestic than anything Dennis has ever done before, including attempting to rear a child. It’s much more romantic than he’s ever behaved with another person, and there is a very real part of him that really hates it, that knows he’s going to look back at this and cringe with how obnoxious they’d been. But he reasons with himself, that no one was going to see it but him and Mac, and he somehow doesn’t think that he and Mac would have the same opinion on this kind of thing. Mac probably loves it, is probably writing his wedding vows as they gaze into each others eyes, the moonlight streaming in and whatever other nonsense the Dear John guy would write. All Dennis knows is that he falls asleep without tossing and turning, and that all of his dreams are sickly sweet.
*
Dennis wakes with the morning sun burning his eyelids, and he’s irritated that he hadn’t closed his blinds the previous night. Mac is fully wrapped around him, grasp somehow still tight even in unconsciousness, so there’s no need for any slow realizations of the night before. Instead, he wakes with the knowledge that the previous night had happened, and the certainty that they were going to move forward with this. They hadn’t strictly discussed it yet, both of them drifting off to sleep while they still were talking breathlessly to the other, amazed that they were even there to begin with. They were going to talk about their relationship from now on.
He took a few minutes to think about that. What did he want out of this thing with Mac? His immediate response is a mixed bag, his heart both leaping out of his chest to declare them as soulmates (or something less gross), and wanting to call the whole thing off. There was a sizeable part of him that wanted to run for the hills. It was all too real, too scary, and that part of him just wanted to call it quits. Purely emotional response. Dennis could do better than that. He had to think about it logically.
Getting into a relationship with Mac would be a relatively seamless event. They lived together, and were already used to spending all of their time together. They didn’t have to worry about finding out anything new and nasty about each other, like when you’re dating someone new. They shared a bank account, a phone plan, a gym membership, and he’s fairly certain that they probably already qualify for a domestic partnership (though— he’s not even really sure Philly does that sort of thing).
Plus, it would be illogical to completely discount these big, mushy feelings that come bursting out of his chest whenever he thinks about Mac saying that he loves him. He’s attracted to the man, feels good when he’s around, feels bad when he’s not. Mac would probably want to date him and be boyfriends and shit, which makes Dennis a little nervous, but so does the idea of not committing to the other. If Dennis had to be Mac’s boyfriend in order to get Mac to stop casually dating hunks, it was a small price to pay.
So. Boyfriends, then. Maybe Mac would be cool with it, if they just take this slow. Lowkey. The idea of going into the bar and telling the rest of the gang about his personal life makes him feel ill.
Mac begins to stir, which Dennis can instantly tell because his face is resting on his chest. He puts everything aside for a minute, and just luxuriates in the moment, because Mac waking up to see Dennis wrapped around him has to be the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his goddamn life.
“Morning,” Dennis murmurs, and his voice sounds clear.
Mac smiles, wiping sleep from his eyes with the hand furthest away from Dennis. “Morning.” He looks so good, sleepy-faced with hair sticking up everywhere. Dennis wants to kiss him, so he does, though he does so gently because it all feels so fragile.
Mac’s lips are warm, and he is reluctant to let Dennis pull away after a brief, chaste kiss. But Dennis knows that his breath is probably really shitty, and he still has some standards.
He slowly untangles himself from the other man, looking over his shoulder every 2 seconds for no outwardly discernible reason. He just wants to make sure that Mac is still there, still watching him with a little smile. When he’s finally sat up on the side of the bed, he turns away and cracks his back, taking an inventory of how his body is feeling that day. He’s a little stiff, probably from contorting around someone’s body and not moving for several hours, and there is of course that dull soreness from the actual fucking. All in all, he feels okay, nothing unmanageable on either front.
He feels Mac’s fingers on his back, stroking at the soft skin. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Little sore.” He looks back again, just to see Mac’s smug expression as his hand dips lower, thumbing at his hip.
“I wonder why.”
Dennis snorts. “C’mon. Brush your teeth.” Doesn’t follow it up with so I can kiss you again . Thinks that it’s implied, and Mac jumps out of bed anyways.
They go through their usual morning routine, Mac shuffling off to make them a pot of coffee while Dennis begins his beauty regimen. He’s conscious that Mac probably doesn’t care right now about the bags under his eyes, or about the mark of discolouration on his forehead, but it comforts him to go through the motions. He wants to look good every day, regardless of what Mac may or may not think. While he’s applying his toner, Mac trots in to set a mug of coffee down beside him, made exactly how he likes it. Cautiously, he pulls Mac toward him, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek in thanks. It’s an unbearably tender moment, and Mac is grinning as he leaves the room to shower.
They meet each other again in the living room when they’re cleaned up and decent, an unspoken agreement to reconvene. Mac’s hair is wet, and Dennis can smell his body wash from a few steps away, and it’s somehow not a complete turnoff. They’re hovering each other, and Dennis can feel his hands itching at his sides because he wants to reach out and touch so, so bad.
“So,” Mac starts, eyes sparkling as he sits down on the couch. The couch looks as if Mac had tidied it up a bit from the night before, must have done it while Dennis was still getting ready. Dennis moves to join him, sitting so their knees are touching. “We should probably talk about last night.”
Dennis needs to remind himself that this is something he wants to do too, that he needs to ignore his instinctive reaction to those words, which is to throw himself out the window to escape. He swallows, eyes scanning Mac’s handsome face, confirming that the man himself is still looking just as enamored. He clears his throat, steeling himself before he has the chance to chicken out again. “I meant what I said, if that’s what you want to know.” He practically vomits up the words, entire body going tense with the effort.
Mac is still looking at him in that intolerably kind way, as if Dennis was a dumb puppy that he was very fond of. “I did want to know.” He places a comforting hand on Dennis’ knee, which he hadn’t even realized he was bouncing with anxiety. “And I meant it too, for what it’s worth. I’ve loved you since we were in high school, dude.”
The words are not as soothing as he probably meant them to be, a thousand unbidden thoughts trickling out to remind him that he had always been awful to Mac in high school. He’d been awful to him this whole time, and sure, Mac could be awful right back. But right now, all he could think about was how he’d mocked Mac for being in and out of the closet, and that at least part of the reason why it had taken Mac so long to finally come out probably had something to do with him. Internally, he waves those thoughts away. This wasn’t the time for them, the conversation was going to be difficult enough for him without apologizing for every bad thing he’d ever done to Mac. Just places his own hand on top of Mac’s hand instead.
“Well. That’s good, then.” He’s just repeating himself at this point, but he needs to give himself some time to navigate around what he wants to talk about next.
Mac beats him to the punch. “Yeah,” he says, almost breathless. “It is good. I just want to know where you wanna go from here on, dude.”
“Stop calling me dude, man.”
“What should I call you then?” There’s a joke somewhere in his words, Mac’s face lighting up as if he’s struggling to suppress laughter. “My boyfriend?”
Dennis looks down at their laps, intertwining his fingers with Mac’s so they’re properly holding hands. He can’t look at him, so he fiddles with their hands instead. “No. Yes. I don’t know, maybe?”
“Really?” Mac sounds genuinely surprised now. Dennis knows that if he looked up, Mac would have that big, dumb surprised expression on his face, eyes wide. “I mean. I’m cool either way, I know you don’t like the labels. I just want to be with you, dud— er, Den.”
He pauses, thinking about that for a moment. Is that all it breaks down to? Not liking labels? It’s true, he doesn’t, but somehow when it’s stated that plainly by someone who would clearly like to have labels associated with them, it sounds insignificant. Mac could be his boyfriend. Dennis could be Mac’s boyfriend. It sounded so high school, and he feels ancient.
“I… I don’t really know what I want, Mac. I wish I did.”
Mac considers his words, thoughtfully. “Well, what do you know that you want?”
Now, he looks up. “I know that I don’t want you to date other people. I know that I want to kiss you, right now, and I want to keep doing that for the foreseeable future. I know that I want to keep doing shit with you, like the dinners and the movie nights and, whatever else.”
Mac leans in closer to him, chuckling slightly. Dennis can feel the breath ghosting off his face. “So, you want to us to kiss and go on dates and not date other people? Sorry to say, but it sounds to me like you want to be my boyfriend.”
Dennis scowls at him, but he’s leaning forward as well, closing the distance between their lips before answering. They kiss, hot and slow, licking languidly into the other’s mouths as he thinks about it. When he pulls away, Mac chases after his lips, pressing another kiss down softly. Dennis rests his forehead against Mac’s, settling in closer to the other man’s side. “Yeah,” he thinks about his words. “But I don’t want to make a big deal of it to the gang. You know how they’ll get.”
He feels Mac nod his head. “They’re the worst. But do you mean like, keep it a secret? Because I don’t know how good I’ll do at that. I’ll wanna touch you all the time.” To illustrate his point, Mac rubs his hands up and down Dennis’ thighs.
“Not a secret. If they figure it out, who gives a shit? Just.” He dips his thumbs below the collar of Mac’s shirt, smoothing down the fabric. “Just keep it to a minimum in front of the rest of them.”
Mac was right; he was shit at keeping it a secret. They spent the rest of the morning lazily making out, Dennis eventually tugging him into his bedroom for a change of scenery as he goes down on Mac. They stick to exchanging blowjobs this time, and Dennis marveled at the expert way in which Mac sucked his dick. He was showy about it, looking up at Dennis every few seconds, hitting it against his tongue a few times. When they’ve both finished, they fix themselves up a bit, and then head down to the bar.
No one is there yet when they arrived, so they take their time opening the bar together. Dennis starts taking the stools down off the tables (which, Dennis is impressed that whoever closed the night before actually put up the stools in the first place), and is quickly joined by an eager to please Mac. Dennis takes the time to just watch Mac as he works, both of them grinning dopily at each other whenever they catch the other staring.
They’re huddled behind the bar looking at something on Dennis’ phone when Frank and Charlie arrive, swinging the door open wildly on their way in. Mac jolts, practically leaps away from Dennis, putting a good measure of distance between the two of them. Dennis shoots him an incredulous look, trying to portray how much more obvious he was making it by not trying to seem obvious. He can already see his “keep it casual” plan going down the toilet.
Frank and Charlie don’t notice though, both looking a bit surprised to see them there that early. After saying hello, the two little men continue their previous conversation, something about cat wrestling that they’re discussing with complete seriousness. Whether they want to get the cats to wrestle, or if they themselves intend to wrestle the cats is unclear from this side of the conversation. Dennis hopes it’s neither. Charlie hops up onto one of the stools at the bar, followed shortly by Frank. Mac makes his way back into the huddle, and Dennis suppresses a smile as he feels Mac brush his hand against his.
Three separate times that night Mac behaved in a way that Dennis would have expected in a caged wild animal. He’ll be completely at ease one minute, then jerking away violently at the slightest provocation. When Dee arrives, walking by to put her jacket in the back office with her trademark, “‘sup boners,” Mac practically explodes at her, something about neither of them having boners. She arches a thin eyebrow at them both before disappearing into the back office.
“Mac?” Dennis asks, pointedly. “Can I talk to you in the bathroom for a minute?” He says it quietly, so the others don’t notice, but Dee is still in the office and Frank and Charlie are clearly not listening. He stalks off to the bathroom, not waiting to see if Mac is following him or not.
Once the door has swung shut behind them, Mac crowds him against the wall to the nearest stall. “Nice, we banging right now?”
“We most certainly are not!” It’s kind of hard to focus with Mac so close to him, but it’s honestly disgusting in the men’s room and he has other things on his mind. “You need to relax out there, man. You’re acting absolutely insane.”
Mac exhales, pulling away dramatically. “I know, I’m sorry! I just keep thinking one of them is going to be able to tell!”
Dennis pulls him back in against him, holding his face delicately in his hands. “I know, I know baby boy.” He presses a tiny kiss to Mac’s lips. The man sighs happily against it. “But you don’t have to worry so much. Just, act normally. I meant it when I said I don’t really care if they find out. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.” He leans in for another kiss, letting this one linger. He enjoys kissing Mac, had always kind of assumed that Mac wouldn’t be very good at it. He had been delighted to find out that he had been wrong. Mac kisses him like he’s never wanted to kiss anyone else, as if every man and woman he’s ever been with has been in preparation for kissing Dennis. He’s happy to just trace patterns on Mac’s collarbone as they make out, no real rush to return back out there to the rest of the bar. The only thing that makes Dennis eventually push away is when he remembers that the door doesn’t lock, and anyone could come in at any moment. Also, the smell in the bathroom.
Mac’s a bit more normal the remainder of the night. A bit quieter, perhaps, only shouting at one of the customers. Dennis watches him as the night goes on. When they’d left the bathroom, they’d both looked as if they’d just been making out, and Dennis was surprised none of them had said anything. But Mac’s lips are so pink, a bit puffy, and Dennis revels in the fact that he was the one to make Mac look that way.
*
He improves from then on, and they’re able to get back into the routine of things, just with the added bonus of going home every night to fuck. It’s nice, Dennis enjoys it. Enjoys being able to touch Mac whenever he feels like it, and not needing to worry about his reaction. He sees Dee watching them sometimes, but she never actually says anything. About a week later, when a couple of the twinks came in to flirt with Dennis, Mac pulls him aside the second he’s done pouring the drinks. “C’mere.” He murmurs, low in his ear. “Make Dee tend bar. I need to show you something.”
Dennis looks at him, curiously. The twinks are watching their exchange with a similar expression, though they look a lot more jealous. Mac grabs his wrist and pulls him to the staircase leading to the basement. Mac closes the door behind them.
“Dude,” Dennis says as Mac drags him down the stairs. “What are you showing me? Charlie’s probably down here.”
Mac sounds confident, leading them down. “Nah, Charlie doesn’t come down here as much since we fixed the monoxicide thing.”
“Monoxide. Carbon monoxide.”
“Whatever, stupid science shit.” Mac flashes a grin over his shoulder, subtle reassurance that he’s just kidding. “Besides the point.”
“And your point is, what exactly?” They’ve reached the basement proper, Dennis looking around at what could have possibly interested Mac down here. It’s still the same old basement, same dirty looking couch propped up against the far wall, same furnace chugging away on the wall opposite from it. They’d gotten Charlie to fix whatever it was he was doing that made it dangerous, at Dee’s insistence, but it was still just the basement.
“Wanted to show you,” Mac releases Dennis’ wrist, reaching into his pockets to remove a white envelope. Dennis can see Mac’s name listed on the front.
“Is that…?”
“Yeah.” Mac passes him the envelope, and Dennis notices that Mac’s already looked inside. “Test results. Picked them up this morning.”
“Guessing it’s good news?” Dennis quirks an eyebrow, opening the envelope and removing the papers inside. He scans the page, only a few words jumping out at him, a column of NEGATIVES listed entirely down the side.
Mac nods, excitedly. “All negatives. I tried to pick up yours, too, but they wouldn’t let me.”
“That’s okay.” If something was wrong on his results, they probably would have called him in for an appointment. Dennis gets tested semi-regularly, less so of late, since he stopped sleeping with any willing female under 30. He also wears protection when he does have sex, unlike Mac. When they’d gone to get tested, it wasn’t his results that concerned him. He’d gotten tested a few months back, and the only person he’d slept with since then had been Rex. He’d only really did it again because he was there; Mac had certainly been willing to have unprotected sex with him from the start, whining every time Dennis tossed a condom at him before they had sex. “Frankly, I’m just shocked that you’re not riddled with disease with how little you used to wear condoms.”
Mac waves him off. “I’d know if I had an STD, dude.”
“No, that’s exactly the point, you can’t always tell without getting tested.”
“Whatever, Den. That’s not even all I wanted to show you.” He reaches back into his pocket, this time pulling out a mini bottle of lube. He raises his eyebrows at Dennis. “Eh?”
Dennis looks from the lube, back up to Mac’s face, his eyebrows wiggling lecherously. He starts to smile. “Are you trying to seduce me with a negative STI panel and a bottle of lube in the basement of our open bar?”
“Yes. Is it working?”
Dennis bites his lip. Yeah, it is working. He nods towards the couch, already unbuckling his pants. “That door better be fucking locked, Mac.”
“It doesn’t lock,” Mac guides him over to the couch, removing his own jeans. He trips a little as the pool at his ankles, but he narrowly avoids tripping. “But I texted Charlie and Dee that I was going to be practicing for a choreographed dance I’m doing at The Rainbow, and needed your opinion on it. Don’t think they’re going to come down here.”
Dennis groans. “Well, you’re probably right that they’re not coming down here, because they most certainly think that we’re fucking.” He surveys the couch, grimacing. “I’m not sitting on this filth.”
“That’s fine.” Mac tosses himself on the couch, a cloud of dust and probably noxious chemicals wafting up at the movement. He unzips his fly. “I’ll sit on the couch. You kneel down on the floor and blow me.”
“Wow, a gentleman. Do you get many men like that?”
Mac shrugs, palming at his dick through his underwear. “No. Usually they just have to see how jacked I am and it’s on.”
Dennis sighs, reluctantly sinking onto the floor in front of Mac. He doesn’t even want to touch the couch, trying to find an approach that will minimize his exposure. Eventually, he works it out by tugging Mac to the very edge of the cushion, and resting his arms on Mac’s strong thighs before he pulls down his boxers and gets to work.
He lasts a remarkable couple of minutes slobbering up and down Mac’s dick before he has to call it quits. “Ok, I can’t do this.” He stands up, ignoring the wounded look on the other man’s face. “C’mon. Let's go, I don’t know, anywhere else. I refuse to ruin my good jeans on this dirty floor any longer. I don’t care how jacked you are.”
“Dennis,” Mac whines, but he’s standing up as well, dick still hard against his stomach. He pushes his boxers all the way down while he has the opportunity. “C’mon. We can make it work down here.” He follows Dennis to the center of the room, having already taken several steps away. He looks around the room, eyes stopping on the pillar in the middle. “How about right here?” He takes his shirt off, rubs down the pillar with the fabric a few times.
“Mac, just because you wiped it with your shirt doesn’t make it any less dirty.” Dennis still takes a step forward. He hates that he can’t help himself.
Mac smiles prettily at him. “You’re right. It’s still dirty. So dirty. And anyone can walk down here at any moment.” He grabs for Dennis’ arms, tugging him in flush against his hard cock, still coated in Dennis’ saliva. He can feel it pressing through his jeans.
“Yeah, not really helping your case.” He winds his arms around Mac’s neck, and he must be really trying to contradict himself, because he kisses him then as well.
“Doesn’t that excite you, Den?” Mac asks him between kisses, hot and open-mouthed. Before Dennis really has time to react, Mac spins him around, pushing him forward against the column. He feels Mac trace his hands down his body, pulling at the belt, still around his waist, as he pushes down Dennis’ pants and boxers. “I could tie you up, if you want. Know how much you like that.”
Dennis ignores the full body shiver that racks through him at that thought, ignoring that he was pushing his ass back to rub against Mac. “You’re not going to tie me up.” He grips onto the column, then he clenches onto his own hands, wrists together exactly where he would want to be bound.
“No, I’m not.” Dennis can hear Mac still holding onto his belt, and the gentle tinkling of the metal is the loudest noise in the world right then. Feels Mac back away from him, and he watches as Mac moves in front of him, wrapping his strong fingers around his wrists. “Not unless you wanted me to.”
Dennis doesn’t say anything, just watches what he’ll do. Mac is staring back, eyes probing, trying to feel out what Dennis wants. He probably thinks that he’s being subtle about it, but Dennis knows Mac, knows that he’d never go through with this if he even got the slightest hint that Dennis wasn’t into it. Dennis gives an almost imperceptible nod, but Mac sees it.
He ties the belt around Dennis’ wrists, leaving him hugging the wooden pillar with naked and shivering. The belt is loose; clumsily tied, and Dennis can tell that if he applied pressure he could absolutely escape. Mac might have done it that way, or it might have been from inexperience, he can’t tell.
Mac returns behind Dennis, kneeling down and peppering kisses to his hips, his cheeks, the tops of his thighs. He slowly opens Dennis up, fingers slicked up with lube, and he’s making quick work of it because he and Mac fucked barely 12 hours before and his muscles don’t put up much resistance. Dennis moans as he inserts a second, then a third finger, biting at his lip to avoid making too much noise. Mac is very good with his hands, he had found out over the past few weeks, a veritable expert when it came to anal stimulation. He could draw out the loudest, most embarrassing noises from Dennis, who really wanted to avoid drawing anyone’s attention from upstairs. His knees buckle a bit as Mac licks into him, circling the rim and his wiggling fingers, and only Mac’s other hand tightly gripping his hip is enough to keep him upright.
“Mac,” he hisses after a minute of this torture. “Please, just fuck me.” He sounds urgent, and he has to admit that it is quite thrilling doing this in the bar, the threat of someone coming to look for them climbing as the seconds slip by. He wants, needs stimulation on his cock, but doesn’t dare pitch forward against the column. He’d probably get a splinter.
“Alright, alright! You can be such a bitch sometimes.” Mac stands up, fingers slipping out of his hole as he goes. Dennis gasps at the sudden loss of contact. “Here you are, tied to a pole in our basement, and you’re still bossing me around.” There’s no heat to his words, even though they’re growled in his ear. He’s leaning in close enough that Dennis can feel his breath on the back of his neck, can feel his lips nuzzling against his hair. He can also feel him slicking up his cock, the movement against his ass. He almost reminds Mac to put on a condom first, but then remembers that the ‘no condom’ thing is the reason they’re down there to begin with. The thought of it makes him all the more desperate. He’s about to feel Mac inside of him, bare.
Mac lines himself up at his entrance, pulling Dennis’ hips back further for a better angle. Dennis must look pornographic right now, hands bound, bent halfway over himself. He shifts his legs, careful not to interrupt Mac back there, but he needs to get some friction on his dick or else he’s going to go crazy. Mac gets what he’s doing, and once he no longer needs his hand to guide his dick inside, he reaches around and takes hold of Dennis’.
It doesn’t really feel all that different without a condom on. He’s sure that it probably does for Mac, who is trembling behind him, trying not to bust, but honestly, the sensation is almost identical. There’s a bit of a difference in texture, he supposes, and he’s definitely aware that he has no condom, but that’s probably just because he knows mentally. He tries to stay still as he quickly adjusts to the pressure, aware of Mac’s struggle behind him.
“Den,” Mac chokes out, confirming what Dennis assumed. He sounds close, and they’ve barely done anything. “You feel so fucking good.”
“I know, baby boy. You do too. Need you to move.”
“I will, just, just give me a second bro.”
“I told you, don’t call me bro when you’re inside me.”
Dennis waits, very impatiently. Mac’s hand on his dick is stationary, unhelpful except for the nice pressure of his grip. He wants to start jerking into his hand, but knows that the movement will be too much for Mac behind him. So he just stands there, his mind beginning to wander as he looks around at the basement around them. Someone really could come down here at any moment, and they’d find Dennis tied to the column, looking bored as Mac panted behind him. The fullness of Mac’s cock does feel very nice, but do you know what else would feel nice? Movement. Right now, it’s just a dick in his ass. He sighs, resting his forehead on the pole.
“Mac. Getting kind of bored here.”
“Okay, okay!” Mac starts moving, miniscule and unsatisfactory. It’s something, though, and the drag of his cock against his walls is somewhat intensified by that very slowness. He clenches around Mac, just because he likes to make things more difficult for him. Mac groans, and he leans in to bite the side of Dennis’ neck as a punishment. Dennis loves it, more a reward than anything else. He tilts his head to the side, allowing for easier access to his neck, and Mac laps greedily at a sensitive point below his ear.
He starts to pick up speed in earnest after that, drawing the little noises out of Dennis that only he can, the only person that Dennis can tolerate hearing him when he’s vulnerable like that. It’s different than what it was when he had sex with other people; none of them could drive him crazy like that, none of them could pull his strings until he was loose and pliant and willing to do and take whatever Mac wanted him to. He’s moving with every thrust, meeting Mac in the middle, eagerness to take him and take him hard overtaking him, shoving his ego and his control issues into the backseat as he revels in the pleasure of fucking Mac.
Plus, Mac hadn’t been wrong. They’re in the dirty basement, he’s tied up, and Mac’s balls deep inside of him. It’s objectively hot.
What he’s really looking forward to here is the grand finale. Dennis is careful, has always been careful, and he can’t recall a time where he’d let a guy come inside of him without a condom. And he’d fucked a lot of dudes in college. His first creampie. Dennis wants to take a picture of the two of them, and put it in a little scrapbook.
“Mac, baby,” Dennis uses his most seductive tone, voice lilted. Mac’s starts jerking him off, as if reminded by Dennis’ voice that he still has his hand on his cock. His voice is a bit more strained as he continues. “You’re so good, you’re giving it to me so hard. Want you to come, want you to blow your load inside me.”
“Jesus,” Mac curses, can feel his hips stuttering a bit, but he perseveres. “Don’t say that shit to me, I’m gonna nut.”
Dennis stifles the urge to roll his eyes at that, hates the word nut. It’s one thing he’ll have to work on with Mac; his dirty talk sucks. But he rolls his hips on his next thrust, drawing a sharp breath out of Dennis, and it makes him forget all about it.
Mac’s rhythm is picking up, growing more and more erratic as he goes. He’s close, Dennis can tell, and he briefly considers the logistics of it all. Would it be hotter to try and keep himself from coming until after Mac came inside? Or should he get himself off first? He knows it’s pretty much over if he comes first; he’ll clench so tightly around Mac that it won’t be long until he’s finished as well. There’s a loud noise from upstairs, sounding as if someone had smashed a glass on the floor, and Dennis jerks forward in surprise. It’s nothing, no one is opening the door to find them, but it’s exhilarating. Makes his mind up for him.
“Mac,” he’s whining, doesn’t care what it sounds like. “Touch me, need you to touch me, so close.” He can feel the urgency building in him, every drag of Mac’s cock filling him up driving him closer and closer to the edge. He twists his hands, testing the belt’s hold, not trying to escape but just to remind himself that he’s tied up. Mac picks up the pace on his dick, thumb flicking over the tip, jerking him off like he was trying to finish him. It’s good, it’s working, Dennis is keening, and he suddenly doesn’t care if he’s being too loud.
“C’mon,” Mac growls in his ear. “Come for me, Den.”
Dennis obliges. He bites down on his bottom lip, and he must have bit down hard, because he can taste blood. He shoots, almost violent, come splattering Mac’s hand, the pillar, and the dirty floor. Mac fucks him through it, his thrusting definitely irregular, and as soon as Dennis has the presence of mind to do so, he slams his over-sensitive ass back to meet him, tightening around him when he’s bottomed out.
It’s just enough, and Mac releases inside him with a strangled gargle. Dennis can feel him pulsing, is unsure if he can actually feel the come inside of him. They stand there together, panting heavily, the basement air thick with the smell of sex as their heart rates stabilize. Mac kind of slumps forward, resting his chin on Dennis’ shoulders, lazily reaching around him to unloop the belt from around his hands. Dennis is grateful; his arms had been getting sore from being bound like that. He lets the belt drop to the floor, just narrowly avoiding a streak of Dennis’ come.
Mac sighs, then pulls away a bit, soft dick slipping out of him. “Oh my god, dude.” He runs his hands down either side of Dennis’ torso, resting on his hips before pulling at his cheeks. He pulls them apart, exposing him to the cold air, and Dennis cranes his neck around just to watch as Mac drops to his knees, eyes wide. “That is so fucking hot.”
Dennis swats at him, twisting to the side so Mac loses his grip. “Don’t stare at my asshole, you’re disgusting.”
Mac peers up at him, still on his knees. “What, you suddenly shy?”
“Maybe I am. Or maybe I just don’t want you looking at—“
He trails off, because it’s only then that he starts to feel it. It’s the normal feeling that he gets after he gets fucked, with the added sensation of Mac’s come starting to slowly trickle down with the force of gravity. It kind of feels like they’ve just used too much lube, which is what his mind had automatically attributed it to, but it’s decidedly different. It’s Mac’s come, dripping out from somewhere farther within. It’s hot.
“Get up here.” He tugs Mac to his feet, attacking his mouth before he fully has his balance back. He’s burning with the need to be close to him, to have Mac pressed up next to him, and he distantly wishes that they were in bed right then. It’s not physically possible, but he wants to be so close that they meld together, almost wants to burrow himself into Mac’s rib cage and stay there forever. He’ll settle for kissing instead; if it were up to him, they’d stay right like this forever.
All too soon, Mac is pulling away from him, has to physically pry Dennis off of him who is clinging onto him like a baby koala. “C’mon,” he pecks him on the cheek, smoothing out an errant strand of hair that is falling across Dennis’ forehead. “We should get back.”
Dennis nods, recognizing the truth to his words even if he doesn’t want to. He leans over, pulls up his boxers, and it’s a cue for both of them to separate and begin getting dressed again. Dennis is unimpressed with his clothes, laying in a heap on the dirty floor, everything somehow already covered in a layer of dust. By the time he’s tucking the belt back around his waist, Mac is fully dressed, just watching him.
“Well?” Dennis asks, throwing his arms out. “How do I look?”
Mac bites his lip, eyeing him up and down. “Honestly dude? You look like you just got fucked.”
Dennis wipes at the dust on his shirt, realizes he’s done his buttons up wrong. “You don’t look too great either.” It’s a lie, Mac looks incredible, all loose and dopey from his orgasm. He does look like he’s been having sex though, and Dennis is sure he looks similar. Hair ruffled, layer of sweat all over, kiss-swollen lips. He chews on the inside of his cheek, but then shrugs. It’s not like they can fix any of that from the basement. He does his best to smooth at his own hair, knows that it probably won’t look anything like he wants it to, and then tips his head towards the stairs. He’ll make sure Mac cleans up down there later. “After you.”
The bar looks more or less identical to how they left it, except that the twinks have vacated the premises. There’s no sign of broken glass anywhere, must have already been tidied up, which is probably a record for cleanliness. Dee is standing at the far end of the bar, turned towards the TV playing in the corner. Mac casts him one last look before making a beeline directly for the men’s room, probably to straighten himself out (so to speak), and Dennis glares as he goes. He couldn’t very well follow him into the bathroom, so he wanders over to the bar, trying to see his reflection in the compact mirror he keeps stashed behind the bar, obscured by bottles and polaroids.
It brings him within speaking distance of Dee, though, who still has her eyes locked on whatever is playing on the TV. “So. You guys banging?”
Dennis looks over with a jolt, before composing himself. He looks back into the mirror, rearranging a few strands of hair. God, he looks wrecked. There’s a dark bruise developing under his ear, on full display for anyone to see. He can also definitely see where he’d bitten down on his lip, the imprint of his own teeth slicing through the delicate flesh. Dee hasn’t even looked at him, though, just assumed they were banging without any proof to back it up. He thinks about lying, but he’d be too obvious, and it would probably just end in some kind of arbitration with the whole gang involved. Doesn’t feel like getting into that with them, especially when he can still feel the evidence of his guilt sitting wet on the crease of his thighs. Decides to rip off the bandaid, get it over with quickly. “Yes, we are.”
Dee wrinkles her nose, but continues watching her show. “Gross. Happy for you two. Finally got your heads out of your own asses.”
He narrows his eyes, turning fully to her. It’s irritating that she won’t even look at him, irritating that she’s acting as if it weren’t a big deal. “Yeah,” his tone is icy. “Now the only thing in our asses are—“
Dee finally looks at him, disgust ringing clearly across her face. “Ew! I don’t want to hear that.”
“Oh, don’t you? You don’t want to hear what Mac and I do to and with each other’s bodies?” He grins, mean. “I just thought, because you were asking, that you might want to know about the sex we’re having.”
“Fine, whatever! I take it back, I’m not happy for either of you, and I’m never going to bring it up again.”
Dennis smiles, clearly the victor.
Charlie finds out not long after, stumbling into their apartment one night drunk. It’s meant to be their night off, meant to be a night that they spend drinking and having vigorous sex with each other. However, they’d gone to dinner first, and Dennis was feeling a little bloated, not sexy, and definitely not in the mood to do anything but sit together on the couch and watch movies. He’s 40-ish and tired, sue him. Mac was taking the night in stride. Dennis would probably give him a blowjob later, just to thank him for being a good— and the word still doesn't come easily to him, not even in his own head— boyfriend.
When Charlie walks in, Dennis is snuggled up against Mac, his strong arms wrapped around him. It’s more of a spoon than anything else, Mac rubbing at his stomach like he was trying to soothe a stomach ache. That’s not really Dennis’ issue here, but he’s reluctant to tell Mac otherwise, because it feels really nice. They both look up when Charlie slams through the door, surprised. Had been awhile since someone had shown up unannounced.
“Oh, uh.” Charlie’s voice is doing that thing, where it’s wobbles squeakily all over the goddamn place.
“Hi Charlie,” Dennis says, warily. Neither of them have moved, though Mac is no longer rubbing his tummy and it’s infuriating. There’s actually still a good chance that Charlie won’t really notice anything, judging by the way that he’s swaying from side to side. He’s definitely plastered, or on some sort of chemical or inhalant, Dennis can never tell with the guy. “What are you doing here?”
“Nothin’.” He teeters forward, dangerously close to face planting into the hardwood flooring. “What’re you two doin’?” He’s at the point of not enunciating any of his g’s. The whole situation is eerily similar to something that happened years earlier, when Mac was trying to bang the waitress. It will however, NOT end in Charlie pissing all over everything, Dennis is determined.
“Watching a movie, buddy.” It’s Mac talking now, voice just as casual as Dennis’ had been. Dennis shifts in closer to him, pleased with his nonchalance.
“Oh.” Charlie pauses, looking between the two of them, a curious expression on his face. He looks halfway between wily, and needing desperately to throw up. “Is this like? A date? A spooning date?”
Dennis cranes his neck around, glancing at Mac for a few seconds. Mac shrugs, remarkably nonplussed. Dennis wants to kiss him. He turns back to Charlie, still standing in their doorway. “Yeah, it is, man.”
“Oh,” Charlie repeats. There are wheels turning in his head, but they seem to screech to a halt at some point. Too glued up for critical thought. “What’re you watchin’? Can I watch?”
“‘Course, Charlie.”
Once Charlie knows, there’s really no point in concealing their status, if they even had been trying. It’s remarkably easy, admitting to it. They announce it to the bar one night, more out of courtesy, because Dee and Charlie already know, and Frank doesn’t really give a shit. He’s still doing that thing where he pretends to care about Mac, which frustrates Dennis to no end. Frank even corners him one evening, a few days after their announcement, and tells Dennis to make sure he treats Mac right.
It infuriates him. He’s beyond the point of expecting some sort of familial reunion with Frank, far beyond the concept of Frank giving a shit about him, but it still stings. Frank raised him. Frank wasn’t his biological father, but he still raised him, still gifted him (and Dee) with heaps on heaps of issues and neurosis--
It doesn’t matter. He tells Mac about it after, not the thing about it upsetting him, just the part where Frank had had the boyfriend talk with him. He tells it in a joking way, curling his lips up at all the right places, but Mac doesn’t laugh. “That’s kind of fucked up.” He just says, an arm wrapped around his shoulder as they ignore Lethal Weapon playing on the TV in front of them. “Shouldn’t it be the other way around?”
“You’d think so.” Dennis chokes out. He’s not upset about it, he’s never expected anything more from Frank, but the words still strangle him. Mac tugs him in closer against his body.
“If it makes you feel better,” Mac says after a quiet minute. Dennis is relieved that he doesn’t push. “Dee had that kind of talk with me the other day.”
It startles a laugh out of him, and he pulls away from Mac slightly so he can look up at his face. “Seriously?”
Mac nods, eager to see Dennis smile properly. “Yeah. She followed me out into the back alley and told me that she knew how to dispose of a body, and I should keep it in mind. Said she’d know if I fucked up. She’d know because of her twin sense.”
Warmth floods Dennis’ body at the thought of Dee defending him, even when he wasn’t there to witness it. Even though he and Dee were generally terrible to each other, they knew they had the other’s best interest in mind. If Dee ever actually found a person to get serious with, he most certainly would have the same threatening conversation. He wondered, vaguely, if Dee actually knew how to dispose of a corpse. “Sounds like Dee.”
Part of being Dee’s twin was accepting her bizarre signs of affection, of discenering between what meant she loved him, and what meant she hated him. This meant love, this obviously meant love, and it meant more to him than he was willing to admit to Mac, or even to himself. Who gave a shit if Frank cared more about Mac and Charlie than he did Dennis and Dee? The twins had never relied on parental love before; they were a whole family themselves. And now Mac was family, Charlie was family. That’s all they needed. And Frank could choke.
*
Some part of Dennis had thought that now he and Mac were together— properly together, fucking every night (well, a lot of the nights), holding hands in the line at Starbucks and shit— that things were going to head in an upward trajectory. And to a certain extent, they were. He enjoyed being with Mac for the most part, found that their lives were already so compatible for being in a romantic relationship. Mac slept in his bed more often than not, and they spent almost every day together without it feeling suffocating.
And Dennis was in love, right? He hadn’t said it since that night, probably would take another 25 years for him to actually say it again, but Mac definitely didn’t have such reservations. Mac peppers his “I love you’s” into almost every conversation, every greeting, every goodbye, and Dennis doesn’t hate it. Mac was always so obvious about shit like that. His heart wasn’t worn on his sleeve; if Mac loved you, he shoved his heart in your face so you couldn’t see or smell anything but the evidence of his bleeding heart. Dennis could love and loathe it in the very same breath. He needed the affection, the adoration, but sometimes Mac would look at him as if he hung the goddamn stars in the sky, and how the hell was he supposed to live up to that kind of thing?
But he still loved Mac, still wanted to waste all of his time with him, and Dennis had thought that being in love was supposed to fundamentally change him or something. On a mental level, he knew that that was bullshit; he was still the same piece of shit regardless of whether he was having feelings or not. But there was a small, childish part of him that had been hoping— desperately — for Mac to sweep him off his feet and heal every hurt, and that he’d be whole again. The power of love was supposed to do that kind of ridiculous sounding shit, wasn’t it?
But it hadn’t worked like that for him. He still woke up in the morning sometimes, and he still felt the uncomfortable pressure at the base of his skull that was the first sign of what could be bomb going off that day. It didn’t always go off. Sometimes Mac would hold his hand and make him breakfast and he could feel the slow ticking in his head growing quieter and quieter until he could barely even hear it. And sometimes, Mac would hold his hand and make him breakfast, and it would only intensify everything, the ugliness seeping its way in anyway.
The bad days were easier than they were before, but not by much. He had always had Mac there to support him, only now his presence felt more comforting, more solid. But at the same time, he now had a lot more to lose with him. There were days that he would say mean things and do awful things to Mac. He could scream and scream and scream at him, and Mac would scream back, or he would eventually stand up and leave the room. But he’d always accept Dennis into his arms when he’d come slinking back in, an apology on his lips that he hopes Mac can taste. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t fair. It was unhealthy.
One night, they’ve been fighting, and Mac had been fighting back because it’s so fucking easy to get him angry, so easy to get his blood boiling to match Dennis’ own rage. He’s been spitting venom at him all day, despite his best efforts to push it back down, to smooth out the jagged edges that come shooting out.
(He used to think of himself like a rose; beautiful, delicate, but not without its thorns. If you touch him the wrong way, you will bleed for it. He doesn’t think of himself like that anymore. He’s more a blade now, twisting into flesh, slicing through sinew and veins and fat without hesitation, irredeemable. His meds help him dull his edge, but he is still sharp.)
Mac is halfway through his sentence, halfway through screaming about whatever sub-argument they’ve worked their way down to, when a strange expression crosses his face. Dennis’ heart pounds at the change, the deviation from their usual argument routine. The anger is cooling in Mac’s eyes, being overtaken by something smaller, more timid. Dennis almost thinks he’s about to back down, about to submit, when—
“Den, are you still taking your pills?” He says it like he would say an apology, an apology for something wrong he had done.
Anger flares up in him, his pulse beating in his ears. “Of course I’m taking my fucking pills, Mac.” It’s not a lie, he really is telling the truth. Taking his medication had slowly wormed its way into his routine; it had become something that would make him itch if he forgot it. It had taken them so long to find something that worked, to find a dosage that helped him, and he was utterly unwilling to stop something that had been so tedious to figure out in the first place. It would have to be readjusted at some point, and it would probably be another few months of dizziness and cold, and he wasn’t going to speed up that process by doing something as reckless as skipping his meds.
But he understands where Mac is coming from. This new empathy was likely the only side effect of falling in love, his new ability to care about what Mac thought and felt. It’s the only thing stopping him from clawing at his face, the only thing that helps him start to slowly deescalate from the ledge he’s found himself on.
Mac, patient, loving Mac, sees him deflate, waits for him. Doesn’t get too close, keeps a respectable distance so Dennis can unwind the threads twisting in his brain.
“... But I haven’t been to therapy in awhile.” The admission feels bitter on his tongue, but the answering look on Mac’s face sweetens it. Like he’s proud of him for volunteering the information, which, if that’s something that makes him happy, Dennis must have a real problem.
The argument they’d been having is miles away, irrelevant to where they’re standing now. Mac smiles a bit, weakly, but it’s definitely there. “Okay.” He nods, “I can work with that.” Dennis resists the urge to smile back at him. Fails miserably.
*
A few days later, Mac walks him up to the shrink’s office, holding his hand the whole while. Dennis doesn’t need it, it’s not like he’s afraid of facing the guy after cancelling a couple of sessions, but he doesn’t try to pull his hand out of Mac’s grip, either. He walks with him as he checks in, glancing around the office curiously as Dennis talks to the receptionist. He looks like a little kid, as if he’d never been inside a fancy building before.
When they sit down, Mac is instantly in his ear, asking questions about the framed magazines on the wall with mental help slogans plastered on the front. He snickers at a particularly ugly one of a kitten dangling from a rope, emblazoned with the words HANG IN THERE. Dennis taps his foot, answers Mac’s questions as best as he can, drawing pictures on Mac’s arm with a pen he snatched from the receptionist’s desk. He draws a dick, obviously, but he also draws the sun behind some clouds, a bouquet of flowers, a stick figure with stink lines wafting off it, labels it MAC in big bold letters. It’s been a good day, waking up slowly to Mac’s mouth on his cock. He had gotten through his morning in a dreamy, post-coital state, not allowing any outside nastiness in on his and Mac’s little bubble.
He hadn’t wanted to interrupt their day, but Mac had been so encouraging that he finally relented, not cancelling his appointment the day of for the first time in weeks.
When his name is called, he turns to Mac, hesitating for a moment. He considers bringing Mac in to the actual appointment, but changes his mind. They’d sprung extra people on their therapists before; Dee brought them all the time with her to hers, and it never tends to go well. He presses a kiss to Mac’s cheek in the end, smiling thinly, assuring him that he’d be back soon. Mac just grins at him. Says, “I love you.”
Dr. Whomever’s office hasn’t changed a bit, looks exactly how it had last time he’d been there, the familiarity of it less comforting, and more monotonous. He hasn’t even made it to his seat, and he’s already remembered that he absolutely hates it there. His jaw is a tight line as he sits, participates in the standard small talk, the “hello’s” and the “it’s been awhile’s”.
“So,” Dr. Whomst finally says, after a whole entire eternity of greetings. He does this kind of thing often, where he’ll start a sentence, and then wait, making Dennis sit there in silence and listen to the sounds of their combined breath, the air conditioning kicking in, and the busy Philadelphia street right outside the window. Sometimes he’ll actually continue talking, and sometimes he’ll just sit there, staring, waiting for Dennis to crack first and start talking himself. Dennis used to not rise to the bait, used to sit there in complete silence for minutes at a time, daring for the shrink to talk first. Now, Dennis will usually just start talking. It’s a waste of time, otherwise.
“So,” Dennis replies, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Mac and I have started fucking.” It’s bold, on the offensive.
“Oh?” It’s the only reply. He peers at him over his therapist glasses, expression blank. Dennis is sure that all mental health professionals order their eyewear from the same magazine somewhere. The prescriptions could be different, but they always had the same effect of making whoever they looked at feel exposed, like a live wire.
Dennis shifts in his seat. “Yeah. It’s… great.” He doesn’t know where he’s going with this. He’d honestly expected a bit more of a reaction from the guy. He tries to remember the previous times they’d talked about Mac, about what he’d said the last time Dennis had been there. He recalls remarkably little, though he’s sure that that can’t be right. The guy never shut up about Mac, about how good Mac could be for him. But pressed for it, Dennis can’t remember a single circumstance where he’d brought him up before Dennis had. He deflates. “We’re seeing how things go.”
“Oh?”
Dennis rolls his eyes for real this time. “We’re dating and we’re in love. There. Are you happy?”
He swears the shrink almost cracks a smile. “That depends. Are you both happy?”
Dennis thinks about it. Is he happy? The immediate answer that comes to him is, yes, probably. Mac’s good to him, is the only person he’s ever met that could tolerate him even when he was so angry that he lashed out on the world. Even his own family hadn’t been able to handle him on his worst days. And more than that, Mac made him feel like he wasn’t just a collection of flaws and fat and broken glass. He’s happy with Mac.
He still tries to avoid it. “How should I know if we’re both happy? I’m not a mind reader.”
“Well, your best guess then.”
“I,” he considers it, seriously. “I think we’re happy.” He had always been selfish, always thought first about himself, so he makes an active effort to think about how Mac feels. How does he feel dealing with Dennis on his good days? On his bad? It’s hard to imagine someone doing anything but dealing with him, tolerating his eccentricities, his rage issues, his flickering between emotional extremes. When he thinks very long about it, he’s not sure why anyone would want to be with him at all. He’s handsome, he objectively knows it, and he’s good at sex, but that’s as far as it goes. Why did Mac like him? It wasn’t as if he were contributing much to their relationship. He’ll ask Mac about it later.
“Then I’m happy too. For both of you.” Shrink doesn’t smile, but his eyes are less critical.
He continues questioning, speaking in half-phrases that don’t sound like questions that always trick Dennis into saying more than he intends to say, but it’s alright. Dennis answers freely, words falling off his tongue for what feels like the first time in forever, unafraid of what might come out. He talks about Mac, talks about how he’ll hold his hand when he’s angry, and how he doesn’t even seem afraid of him lashing out. He talks about how they go to dinner, how they have their movie nights, about how surprised he was that spending every night together comforted him instead of suffocating him.
He talks a little bit about the things that Mac do that make him angry. Talks about how it’s not always Mac’s fault, how sometimes Mac will look at him and smile and it’ll make Dennis want to say something that will make him stop smiling. Talks about how he sometimes wants to hurt Mac— not really hurt Mac, not physically, but like he wants to twist and pull and press his fingers onto the bruises he’s already inflicted on Mac’s beating heart until he pulls away for good. Dr. Who-Cares listens, listens and offers bits and pieces of comfort, of criticism, sprinkling them over Dennis’ monologues. It’s frustrating, sometimes, to think about how he’s always holding some opinions back, some hidden solution that he hides behind his teeth so that Dennis needs to keep coming back to pay more money for the scraps he will give him.
But still, he leaves their session feeling lighter, less burdened than he had been when he entered. He sucks in a deep breath as he stands in the hallway outside the office, out of sight of Mac in the waiting area. This is why he comes to therapy, he reminds himself. It’s fucking miserable, it’s embarrassing as shit sometimes, but his brain feels a bit less chaotic.
There’s a mirror in the hall across from him, and he takes a moment to straighten himself out a bit, fixes the hair that has fallen out of place since that morning, and then just studies his reflection. There’s been something off about how he looks lately, can’t quite place it. He presses his fingers against the hollows of his cheeks, tracing down his face to his jawline. It all looks the same, all looks exactly how he’s always looked. He’s a bit more filled out, maybe; he has been eating full meals the last few months. His brow furrows, but he resigns himself to not knowing, resigns himself to the mystery, something that would have been previously unacceptable to him. He turns on his heel, and goes out to meet Mac.
It’s only a little while later, after they’ve stopped and grabbed dinner, when he catches sight of his reflection in a store window that the answer comes to him. He’s standing next to Mac, not holding hands, because it’s still too much for both of them to hold hands while walking down the street in south Philly, but their arms brush against each other every other step or two. It’s a warm evening, summer stretches before them, and Dee has just called them to tell them they had a plan and that they needed to get to the bar immediately. Mac is grinning, chattering a mile a minute, guessing at what they were going to get up to that night.
He catches himself in the window looking at Mac, and the expression on his face is so soft, so gentle, that it finally clicks into place how he looks different. It’s his eyes— he looks less guarded. He hadn’t really noticed until then that the walls he’d erected around himself back when he was very young (too young to even remember when he’d started setting up the bricks), had crumpled all around him. Or maybe not crumpled, maybe the walls were still up, but there was now a window, or a doorway, or whatever other metaphorical device one could imagine up. He wonders how long he’d been like that. Wonders when exactly he’d carved out the door. Or if it were even him who had done it.
Another deep breath. Maybe there is an end to all this, and maybe it’d be bad. Maybe he and Mac would end up hating each other (maybe they wouldn’t). Maybe Mac would leave him, or maybe he’d leave Mac (maybe neither of them would). Maybe they’d get hit by a fucking bus walking down the street (or maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t; there’d be no rogue automobiles, no fiery explosion, just the two of them, sighing into each other’s mouths until they were old and bald and ugly).
“Mac,” Dennis says, and it’s so quiet, barely audible over the sounds of traffic, but Mac hears him anyway. He stops, turns to face Dennis, halfway through his own sentence, but he doesn’t mind being interrupted. Not when it’s Dennis.
“Yeah, Den?” Big brown eyes sparkle in the light of the setting sun, in the fluorescent street lights coming to life with the night. It reminds him of that night in April, months ago, when he’d wanted so badly to kiss Mac in the Wawa parking lot. Remembers how he’d stopped himself, so he takes the opportunity to right that mistake.
He drapes his arms around Mac’s shoulders, cognizant of the people all around them, in passing cars and inside stores who could potentially see them there, but he didn’t care. Mac looks surprised, but then his expression shifts to something different, the mirror of Dennis’ own dopey smile that he couldn’t wipe off his face if he tried. He touches his lips to Mac’s, soft at first, then pressing in harder, trying to convey every gooey thought, every thunk of his stuttering heart through kiss alone. Mac melts against him, hands resting on his hips.
Dennis pulls back a millimeter. “I love you, man.”
Mac looks a bit dazed, but doesn’t stop his lips from curling up, amused. “I love you too, dude.”
“Don’t call me dude when you’re expressing your everlasting love for me.”
“But you can call me man? Thought I only couldn’t call you dude when I’m inside you?”
Dennis snorts, the moment fluttering away on the breeze, but it feels nice. It feels achingly real. He kisses Mac again. “General rule of thumb? Just don’t call me anything that’d you’d also call Charlie.” He pulls away, hands tracing down Mac’s chest, reluctant to fully let go. Mac grabs his hand, clasps their fingers tightly around each other.
“There’s a lot of rules for being with you, Dennis .”
“Yeah,” he agrees, because it’s true. He starts leading them down the street. It’s only a few blocks to Paddy’s, to the gang, to the life they’ve created for themselves. “You like it though.”
He doesn’t look, but he can feel Mac’s gaze on the side of his face. Can feel the warmth of his smile. “Yeah.” He sounds breathless. “I do.”